雅思阅读真题
剑桥雅思阅读11真题及答案解析(test3)
剑桥雅思阅读11真题及答案解析(test3)雅思阅读部分一直都是中国考生比较重视的题目,并且也是很有难度的题目,针对于雅思阅读真题资料也是大家需要重点分析的。
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剑桥雅思阅读11原文(test3)READING PASSAGE 1You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.THE STORY OF SILKThe history of the world’s most luxurious fabric, from ancient China to the present daySilk is a fine, smooth material produced from the cocoons —soft protective shells —that are made by mulberry silkworms (insect larvae). Legend has it that it was Lei Tzu, wife of the Yellow Emperor, ruler of China in about 3000 BC, who discovered silkworms. One account of the story goes that as she was taking a walk in her husband’s gardens, she discovered that silkworms were responsible for the destruction of several mulberry trees. She collected a number of cocoons and sat down to have a rest. It just so happened that while she was sipping some tea, one of the cocoons that she had collected landed in the hot tea and started to unravel into a fine thread. Lei Tzu found that she could wind this thread around her fingers. Subsequently, she persuaded her husband to allow her to rear silkworms on a grove of mulberry trees. She also devised a special reel to draw the fibres from the cocoon into a single thread so that they would be strong enough to be woven into fabric. While it is unknown just how much of this is true, it is certainly known that silk cultivationhas existed in China for several millennia.Originally, silkworm farming was solely restricted to women, and it was they who were responsible for the growing, harvesting and weaving. Silk quickly grew into a symbol of status, and originally, only royalty were entitled to have clothes made of silk. The rules were gradually relaxed over the years until finally during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD), even peasants, the lowest caste, were also entitled to wear silk. Sometime during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), silk was so prized that it was also used as a unit of currency. Government officials were paid their salary in silk, and farmers paid their taxes in grain and silk. Silk was also used as diplomatic gifts by the emperor. Fishing lines, bowstrings, musical instruments and paper were all made using silk. The earliest indication of silk paper being used was discovered in the tomb of a noble who is estimated to have died around 168 AD.Demand for this exotic fabric eventually created the lucrative trade route now known as the Silk Road, taking silk westward and bringing gold, silver and wool to the East. It was named the Silk Road after its most precious commodity, which was considered to be worth more than gold. The Silk Road stretched over 6,000 kilometres from Eastern China to the Mediterranean Sea, following the Great Wall of China, climbing the Pamir mountain range, crossing modern-day Afghanistan and going on to the Middle East, with a major trading market in Damascus. From there, the merchandise was shipped across the Mediterranean Sea. Few merchants travelled the entire route; goods were handled mostly by a series of middlemen.With the mulberry silkworm being native to China, the country was the world’s sole producer of silk for many hundreds of years. The secret of silk-making eventually reached the rest ofthe world via the Byzantine Empire, which ruled over the Mediterranean region of southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East during the period 330-1453 AD. According to another legend, monks working for the Byzantine emperor Justinian smuggled silkworm eggs to Constantinople (Istanbul in modern-day Turkey) in 550 AD, concealed inside hollow bamboo walking canes. The Byzantines were as secretive as the Chinese, however, and for many centuries the weaving and trading of silk fabric was a strict imperial monopoly. Then in the seventh century, the Arabs conquered Persia, capturing their magnificent silks in the process. Silk production thus spread through Africa, Sicily and Spain as the Arabs swept through these lands. Andalusia in southern Spain was Europe’s main silk-producing centre in the tenth century. By the thirteenth century, however, Italy had become Europe’s leader in silk production and export. Venetian merchants traded extensively in silk and encouraged silk growers to settle in Italy. Even now, silk processed in the province of Como in northern Italy enjoys an esteemed reputation.The nineteenth century and industrialisation saw the downfall of the European silk industry. Cheaper Japanese silk, trade in which was greatly facilitated by the opening of the Suez Canal, was one of the many factors driving the trend. Then in the twentieth century, new manmade fibres, such as nylon, started to be used in what had traditionally been silk products, such as stockings and parachutes. The two world wars, which interrupted the supply of raw material from Japan, also stifled the European silk industry. After the Second World War, Japan’s silk production was restored, with improved production and quality of raw silk. Japan was to remain the world’s biggest producer of raw silk, and practically the only major exporter of raw silk, untilthe 1970s. However, in more recent decades, China has gradually recaptured its position as the world’s biggest producer and exporter of raw silk and silk yarn. Today, around 125,000 metric tons of silk are produced in the world, and almost two thirds of that production takes place in China.Questions 1-9Complete the notes below.Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 1-9 on your answer sheet.THE STORY OF SILKEarly silk production in ChinaAround 3000 BC, according to legend:- silkworm cocoon fell into emperor’s wife’s 1 __________- emperor’s wife invented a 2 __________ to pull out silk fibresOnly 3 __________ were allowed to produce silkOnly 4 __________ were allowed to wear silkSilk used as a form of 5 __________- e.g. farmers’ taxes consisted partly of silkSilk used for many purposes- e.g. evidence found of 6 __________ made from silk around 168 ADSilk reaches rest of worldMerchants use Silk Road to take silk westward and bring back 7 __________ and precious metals550 AD: 8 __________ hide silkworm eggs in canes and take them to ConstantinopleSilk production spreads across Middle East and Europe20th century: 9 __________ and other manmade fibres cause decline in silk productionQuestions 10-13Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage 1?In boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this10 Gold was the most valuable material transported along the Silk Road.11 Most tradesmen only went along certain sections of the Silk Road.12 The Byzantines spread the practice of silk production across the West.13 Silk yarn makes up the majority of silk currently exported from China.READING PASSAGE 2You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.Great MigrationsAnimal migration, however it is defined, is far more than just the movement of animals. It can loosely be described as travel that takes place at regular intervals ?— often in an annual cycle — that may involve many members of a species, and is rewarded only after a long journey. It suggests inherited instinct. The biologist Hugh Dingle has identified five characteristics that apply, in varying degrees and combinations, to all migrations. They are prolonged movements that carry animals outside familiar habitats; they tend to be linear, not zigzaggy; they involve special behaviours concerning preparation (such as overfeeding) and arrival; they demand special allocations of energy. And onemore: migrating animals maintain an intense attentiveness to the greater mission, which keeps them undistracted by temptations and undeterred by challenges that would turn other animals aside.An arctic tern, on its 20,000 km flight from the extreme south of South America to the Arctic circle, will take no notice of a nice smelly herring offered from a bird-watcher’s boat along the way. While local gulls will dive voraciously for such handouts, the tern flies on. Why? The arctic tern resists distraction because it is driven at that moment by an instinctive sense of something we humans find admirable: larger purpose. In other words, it is determined to reach its destination. The bird senses that it can eat, rest and mate later. Right now it is totally focused on the journey; its undivided intent is arrival.Reaching some gravelly coastline in the Arctic, upon which other arctic terns have converged, will serve its larger purpose as shaped by evolution: finding a place, a time, and a set of circumstances in which it can successfully hatch and rear offspring.But migration is a complex issue, and biologists define it differently, depending in part on what sorts of animals they study. Joe! Berger, of the University of Montana, who works on the American pronghorn and other large terrestrial mammals, prefers what he calls a simple, practical definition suited to his beasts: ‘movements from a seasonal home area away to another home area and back again’. Generally the reason for such seasonal back-and-forth movement is to seek resources that aren’t available within a single area year-round.But daily vertical movements by zooplankton in the ocean —upward by night to seek food, downward by day to escapepredators —can also be considered migration. So can the movement of aphids when, having depleted the young leaves on one food plant, their offspring then fly onward to a different host plant, with no one aphid ever returning to where it started.Dingle is an evolutionary biologist who studies insects. His definition is more intricate than Berger’s, citing those five features that distinguish migration from other forms of movement. They allow for the fact that, for example, aphids will become sensitive to blue light (from the sky) when it’s time for takeoff on their big journey, and sensitive to yellow light (reflected from tender young leaves) when it’s appropriate to land. Birds will fatten themselves with heavy feeding in advance of a long migrational flight. The value of his definition, Dingle argues, is that it focuses attention on what the phenomenon of wildebeest migration shares with the phenomenon of the aphids, and therefore helps guide researchers towards understanding how evolution has produced them all.Human behaviour, however, is having a detrimental impact on animal migration. The pronghorn, which resembles an antelope, though they are unrelated, is the fastest land mammal of the New World. One population, which spends the summer in the mountainous Grand Teton National Park of the western USA, follows a narrow route from its summer range in the mountains, across a river, and down onto the plains. Here they wait out the frozen months, feeding mainly on sagebrush blown clear of snow. These pronghorn are notable for the invariance of their migration route and the severity of its constriction at three bottlenecks. If they can’t pass through each of the three during their spring migration, they can’t reach their bounty of summer grazing; if they can’t pass through again in autumn, escaping south ontothose windblown plains, they are likely to die trying to overwinter in the deep snow. Pronghorn, dependent on distance vision and speed to keep safe from predators, traverse high, open shoulders of land, where they can see and run. At one of the bottlenecks, forested hills rise to form a V, leaving a corridor of open ground only about 150 metres wide, filled with private homes. Increasing development is leading toward a crisis for the pronghorn, threatening to choke off their passageway.Conservation scientists, along with some biologists and land managers within the USA’s National Park Service and other agencies, are now working to preserve migrational behaviours, not just species and habitats. A National Forest has recognised the path of the pronghorn, much of which passes across its land, as a protected migration corridor. But neither the Forest Service nor the Park Service can control what happens on private land at a bottleneck. And with certain other migrating species, the challenge is complicated further —by vastly greater distances traversed, more jurisdictions, more borders, more dangers along the way. We will require wisdom and resoluteness to ensure that migrating species can continue their journeying a while longer.Questions 14-18Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?In boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this14 Local gulls and migrating arctic terns behave in the same way when offered food.15 Experts’ definitions of migration tend to vary accordingto their area of study.16 Very few experts agree that the movement of aphids can be considered migration.17 Aphids’ journeys are affected b y changes in the light that they perceive.18 Dingle’s aim is to distinguish between the migratory behaviours of different species.Questions 19-22Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G, below.Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.19 According to Dingle, migratory routes are likely to20 To prepare for migration, animals are likely to21 During migration, animals are unlikely to22 Arctic terns illustrate migrating animals’ ability toA be discouraged by difficulties.B travel on open land where they can look out for predators.C eat more than they need for immediate purposes.D be repeated daily.E ignore distractions.F be governed by the availability of water.G follow a straight line.Questions 23-26Complete the summary below.Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.The migration of pronghornsPronghorns rely on their eyesight and 23 __________ to avoid predators. One particular pop ulation’s summer habitat is a national park, and their winter home is on the 24 __________,where they go to avoid the danger presented by the snow at that time of year. However, their route between these two areas contains three 25 __________. One problem is the construction of new homes in a narrow 26 __________ of land on the pronghorns’ route.READING PASSAGE 3You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.Preface to ‘How the other half thinks: Adventu res in mathematical reasoning’A Occasionally, in some difficult musical compositions, there are beautiful, but easy parts — parts so simple a beginner could play them. So it is with mathematics as well. There are some discoveries in advanced mathematics that do not depend on specialized knowledge, not even on algebra, geometry, or trigonometry. Instead they may involve, at most, a little arithmetic, such as ‘the sum of two odd numbers is even’, and common sense. Each of the eight chapters in this book illustrates this phenomenon. Anyone can understand every step in the reasoning.The thinking in each chapter uses at most only elementary arithmetic, and sometimes not even that. Thus all readers will have the chance to participate in a mathematical experience, to appreciate the beauty of mathematics, and to become familiar with its logical, yet intuitive, style of thinking.B One of my purposes in writing this book is to give readers who haven’t had the opportunity to see and enjoy real mathematics the chance to appreciate the mathematical way of thinking. I want to reveal not only some of the fascinating discoveries, but, more importantly, the reasoning behind them.In that respect, this book differs from most books on mathematics written for the general public. Some present the lives of colorful mathematicians. Others describe important applications of mathematics. Yet others go into mathematical procedures, but assume that the reader is adept in using algebra.C I hope this book will help bridge that notorious gap that separates the two cultures: the humanities and the sciences, or should I say the right brain (intuitive) and the left brain (analytical, numerical). As the chapters will illustrate, mathematics is not restricted to the analytical and numerical; intuition plays a significant role. The alleged gap can be narrowed or completely overcome by anyone, in part because each of us is far from using the full capacity of either side of the brain. To illustrate our human potential, I cite a structural engineer who is an artist, an electrical engineer who is an opera singer, an opera singer who published mathematical research, and a mathematician who publishes short stories.D Other scientists have written books to explain their fields to non-scientists, but have necessarily had to omit the mathematics, although it provides the foundation of their theories. The reader must remain a tantalized spectator rather than an involved participant, since the appropriate language for describing the details in much of science is mathematics, whether the subject is expanding universe, subatomic particles, or chromosomes. Though the broad outline of a scientific theory can be sketched intuitively, when a part of the physical universe is finally understood, its description often looks like a page in a mathematics text.E Still, the non-mathematical reader can go far in understanding mathematical reasoning. This book presents thedetails that illustrate the mathematical style of thinking, which involves sustained, step-by-step analysis, experiments, and insights. You will turn these pages much more slowly than when reading a novel or a newspaper. It may help to have a pencil and paper ready to check claims and carry out experiments.F As I wrote, I kept in mind two types of readers: those who enjoyed mathematics until they were turned off by an unpleasant episode, usually around fifth grade, and mathematics aficionados, who will find much that is new throughout the book.This book also serves readers who simply want to sharpen their analytical skills. Many careers, such as law and medicine, require extended, precise analysis. Each chapter offers practice in following a sustained and closely argued line of thought. That mathematics can develop this skill is shown by these two testimonials:G A physician wrote, ‘The discipline of analytical thought processes [in mathematics] prepared me extremely well for medical school. In medicine one is faced with a problem which must be thoroughly analyzed before a solution can be found. The proces s is similar to doing mathematics.’A lawyer made the same point, ‘Although I had no background in law — not even one political science course — I did well at one of the best law schools. I attribute much of my success there to having learned, through the study of mathematics, and, in particular, theorems, how to analyze complicated principles. Lawyers who have studied mathematics can master the legal principles in a way that most others cannot.’I hope you will share my delight in watching as simple, even na?ve, questions lead to remarkable solutions and purely theoretical discoveries find unanticipated applications.Questions 27-34Reading Passage 3 has seven sections, A-G.Which section contains the following information?Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 27-34 on your answer sheet.NB You may use any letter more than once.27 a reference to books that assume a lack of mathematical knowledge28 the way in which this is not a typical book about mathematics29 personal examples of being helped by mathematics30 examples of people who each had abilities that seemed incompatible31 mention of different focuses of books about mathematics32 a contrast between reading this book and reading other kinds of publication33 a claim that the whole of the book is accessible to everybody34 a reference to different categories of intended readers of this bookQuestions 35-40Complete the sentences below.Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet.35 Some areas of both music and mathematics are suitable for someone who is a __________.36 It is sometimes possible to understand advanced mathematics using no more than a limited knowledge of __________.37 The writer intends to show that mathematics requires__________ thinking, as well as analytical skills.38 Some books written by __________ have had to leave out the mathematics that is central to their theories.39 The writer advises non-mathematical readers to perform __________ while reading the book.40 A lawyer found that studying __________ helped even more than other areas of mathematics in the study of law.剑桥雅思阅读11原文参考译文(test3)PASSAGE 1 参考译文:丝绸的故事世上最昂贵奢华织物的历史,从古代中国直到今天丝绸是种细软、光滑的布料,产自桑蚕(该昆虫的幼体形态)制作出的蚕茧——即其柔软的保护性外壳。
剑桥雅思真题4-阅读test1(附答案)
剑桥雅思阅读真题集1Reading Passage 1You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 1-14 which are based on Reading Passage 1 belowAdults and children are frequently confronted with statements about the alarming rate of loss of tropical rainforests. For example, one graphic illustration to which children might readily relate is the estimate that rainforests are being destroyed at a rate equivalent to one thousand football fields every forty minutes — about the duration of a normal classroom period. In the face of the frequent and often vivid media coverage, it is likely that children will have formed ideas about rainforests — what and where they are, why they are important, what endangers them — independent of any formal tuition. It is also possible that some of these ideas will be mistaken.Many studies have shown that children harbour misconceptions about ‘pure’, curriculum science. These misconceptions do not remain isolated but become incorporated into a multifaceted, but organised, conceptual framework, making it and the component ideas, some of which are erroneous, more robust but also accessible to modification. These ideas may be developed by children absorbing ideas through the popular media. Sometimes this information may be erroneous. It seems schools may not be providing an opportunity for children to re-express their ideas and so have them tested and refined by teachers and their peers.Despite the extensive coverage in the popular media of the destruction of rainforests, little formal information is available about children’s ideas in this area. The aim of the present study is to start to provide such information, to help teachers design their educational strategies to build upon correct ideas and to displace misconceptions and to plan programmes in environmental studies in their schools.The study surveys children’s scientific knowledge and attitudes to rainforests. Secondary school children were asked to complete a questionnaire containing five open-form questions. The most frequent responses to the first question were descriptions which are self-evident from the term ‘rainforest’. Some children described them as damp, wet or hot. The second question concerned the geographical location of rainforests. The commonest responses were continents or countries: Africa (given by 43% of children), South America (30%), Brazil (25%). Some children also gave more general locations, such as being near the Equator.Responses to question three concerned the importance of rainforests. The dominant idea, raised by 64% of the pupils, was that rainforests provide animals with habitats. Fewer students responded that rainforests provide plant habitats, and even fewer mentioned the indigenous populations of rainforests. More girls (70%) than boys (60%) raised the idea of rainforest as animal habitats.Similarly, but at a lower level, more girls (13%) than boys (5%) said that rainforests provided human habitats. These observations are generally consistent with our previous studies of pupils’ views about the use and conservation of rainforests, in which girls were shown to be more sympathetic to animals and expressed views which seem to place an intrinsic value on non-human animal life.The fourth question concerned the causes of the destruction of rainforests. Perhaps encouragingly,more than half of the pupils (59%) identified that it is human activities which are destroying rainforests, some personalising the responsibility by the use of terms such as ‘we are’. About 18% of the pupils referred specifically to logging activity.One misconception, expressed by some 10% of the pupils, was that acid rain is responsible for rainforest destruction; a similar proportion said that pollution is destroying rainforests. Here, children are confusing rainforest destruction with damage to the forests of Western Europe by these factors. While two fifths of the students provided the information that the rainforests provide oxygen, in some cases this response also embraced the misconception that rainforest destruction would reduce atmospheric oxygen, making the atmosphere incompatible with human life on Earth.In answer to the final question about the importance of rainforest conservation, the majority of children simply said that we need rainforests to survive. Only a few of the pupils (6%) mentioned that rainforest destruction may contribute to global warming. This is surprising considering the high level of media coverage on this issue. Some children expressed the idea that the conservation of rainforests is not important.The results of this study suggest that certain ideas predominate in the thinking of children about rainforests. Pupils’ responses indicate some misconceptions in basic scientific knowledge of rainforests’ ecosystems such as their ideas about rainforests as habitats for animals, plants and humans and the relationship between climatic change and destruction of rainforests.Pupils did not volunteer ideas that suggested that they appreciated the complexity of causes of rainforest destruction. In other words, they gave no indication of an appreciation of either the range of ways in which rainforests are important or the complex social, economic and political factors which drive the activities which are destroying the rainforests. One encouragement is that the results of similar studies about other environmental issues suggest that older children seem to acquire the ability to appreciate, value and evaluate conflicting views. Environmental education offers an arena in which these skills can be developed, which is essential for these children as future decision-makers.Questions 1-8Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?In boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this1 The plight of the rainforests has largely been ignored by the media.2 Children only accept opinions on rainforests that they encounter in their classrooms.3 It has been suggested that children hold mistaken views about the ‘pure’ science that they study at school.4 The fact that children’s ideas about science form part of a larger framework of ideas means thatit is easier to change them.5 The study involved asking children a number of yes/no questions such as ‘Are there any rainforests in Africa?’6 Girls are more likely than boys to hold mistaken views about the rainforests’ destruction.7 The study reported here follows on from a series of studies that have looked at children’s understanding of rainforests.8 A second study has been planned to investigate primary school children’s ideas about rainforests.Questions 9-13The box below gives a list of responses A-P to the questionnaire discussed in Reading Passage 1.Answer the following questions by choosing the correct responses A-P.Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.9 What was the children’s most frequent response when asked where the rainforests were?10 What was the most common response to the question about the importance of the rainforests?11 What did most children give as the reason for the loss of the rainforests?12 Why did most children think it important for the rainforests to be protected?13 Which of the responses is cited as unexpectedly uncommon, given the amount of time spent on the issue by the newspapers and television?Question 14Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, D or E.Write your answer in box 14 on your answer sheet.Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 1?A The development of a programme in environmental studies within a science curriculumB Children’s ideas about the rainforests and the implications for course designC The extent to which children have been misled by the media concerning the rainforestsD How to collect, collate and describe the ideas of secondary school children.E The importance of the rainforests and the reasons for their destructionREADING PASSAGE 2You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.What Do Whales Feel?An examination of the functioning of the senses in cetaceans, the group of mammals comprising whales, dolphins and porpoisesSome of the senses that we and other terrestrial mammals take for granted are either reduced or absent in cetaceans or fail to function well in water. For example, it appears from their brain structure that toothed species are unable to smell. Baleen species, on the other hand, appear to have some related brain structures but it is not known whether these are functional. It has been speculated that, as the blowholes evolved and migrated to the top of the head, the neural pathways serving sense of smell may have been nearly all sacrificed. Similarly, although at least some cetaceans have taste buds, the nerves serving these have degenerated or are rudimentary.The sense of touch has sometimes been described as weak too, but this view is probably mistaken. Trainers of captive dolphins and small whales often remark on their animals’ responsiveness to being touched or rubbed, and both captive and free-ranging cetacean individuals of all species (particularly adults and calves, or members of the same subgroup) appear to make frequent contact. This contact may help to maintain order within a group, and stroking or touching are part of the courtship ritual in most species. The area around the blowhole is also particularly sensitive and captive animals often object strongly to being touched there.The sense of vision is developed to different degree in different species. Baleen species studied at close quarters underwater — specifically a grey whale calf in captivity for a year, and free-ranging right whale and humpback whales studied and filmed off Argentina and Hawaii — have obviously tracked objects with vision underwater, and they can apparently see moderately well both in water and in air. However, the position of the eyes so restricts the field of vision in baleen whales that they probably do not have stereoscopic vision.On the other hand, the position of the eyes in most dolphins and porpoises suggests that they have stereoscopic vision forward and downward. Eye position in freshwater dolphins, which often swim on their side or upside down while feeding, suggests that what vision they have is stereoscopic forward and upward. By comparison, the bottlenose dolphin has extremely keenvision in water. Judging from the way it watches and tracks airborne flying fish, it can apparently see fairly well through the air-water interface as well. And although preliminary experimental evidence suggests that their in-air vision is poor, the accuracy with which dolphins leap high to take small fish out of a trainer’s hand provides anecdotal evidence to the contrary.Such variation can no doubt be explained with reference to the habitats in which individual species have developed. For example, vision is obviously more useful to species inhabiting clear open waters than to those living in turbid rivers and flooded plains. The South American boutu and Chinese Beiji, for instance, appear to have very limited vision, and the Indian susus are blind, their eyes reduced to slits that probably allow them to sense only the direction and intensity of light.Although the senses of taste and smell appear to have deteriorated, and vision in water appears to be uncertain, such weaknesses are more than compensated for by cetaceans’ well-developed acoustic sense. Most species are highly vocal, although they vary in the range of sounds they produce, and many forage for food using echolocation1. Large baleen whales primarily use the lower frequencies and are often limited in their repertoire. Notable exceptions are the nearly song-like choruses of bowhead whales in summer and the complex, haunting utterances of the humpback whales. Toothed species in general employ more of the frequency spectrum, and produce a wider variety of sounds, than baleen species (though the sperm whale apparently produces a monotonous series of high-energy clicks and little else). Some of the more complicated sounds are clearly communicative, although what role they may play in the social life and ‘culture’ of cetaceans has been more the subject of wild speculation than of solid science.1. echolocation: the perception of objects by means of sound wave echoes.Questions 15-21Complete the table below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 2 for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 15-21 on your answer sheet.Questions 22-26Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.22 Which of the senses is described here as being involved in mating?23 What species swims upside down while eating?24 What can bottlenose dolphins follow from under the water?25 Which type of habitat is related to good visual ability?26 Which of the senses is best developed in cetaceans?READING PASSAGE 3You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.Visual Symbols and the BlindFrom a number of recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space. But pictures are more than literal representations. This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle (Fig. 1). I was taken aback. Lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration. Indeed, as art scholar David Kunzle notes, Wilhelm Busch, a trend-setting nineteenth-century cartoonist, used virtually no motion lines in his popular figures until about 1877.When I asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever rendition appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel’s spokes as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines — or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were apt ways of showing movement or if they were merely idiosyncratic marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.To search out these answers, I created raised-line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dashed and extended beyond the perimeter of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: wobbling, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was wobbling; and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that spokes extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dashed spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.In addition, the favoured description for the sighted was the favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.We have found that the blind understand other kinds of visual metaphors as well. One blind woman drew a picture of a child inside a heart – choosing that symbol, she said, to show that love surrounded the child. With Chang Hong Liu, a doctoral student from China, I have begun exploring how well blind people understand the symbolism behind shapes such as hearts that do not directly represent their meaning.We gave a list of twenty pairs of words to sighted subjects and asked them to pick from each pair the term that best related to a circle and the term that best related to a square. For example, we asked: What goes with soft? A circle or a square? Which shape goes with hard?All our subjects deemed the circle soft and the square hard. A full 94% ascribed happy to the circle, instead of sad. But other pairs revealed less agreement: 79%matched fast to slow and weak to strong, respectively. And only 51% linked deep to circle and shallow to square. (See Fig. 2) When we tested four totally blind volunteers using the same list, we found that their choices closely resembled those made by the sighted subjects. One man, who had been blind since birth, scored extremely well. He made only one match differing from the consensus, assigning ‘far’ to square and ‘near’ to circle. In fact, only a small majority of sighted subjects – 53% – had paired far and near to the opposite partners. Thus, we concluded that the blind interpret abstract shapes as sighted people do.Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.Write your answers in boxes 27-29 on your answer sheet.27 In the first paragraph the writer makes the point that blind people.A may be interested in studying art.B can draw outlines of different objects and surfaces.C can recognise conventions such as perspective.D can draw accurately.28 The writer was surprised because the blind womanA drew a circle on her own initiative.B did not understand what a wheel looked like.C included a symbol representing movement.D was the first person to use lines of motion.29 From the experiment described in Part 1, the writer found that the blind subjectsA had good understanding of symbols representing movement.B could control the movement of wheels very accurately.C worked together well as a group in solving problems.D got better results than the sighted undergraduates.Questions 30-32Look at the following diagrams (Questions 30-32), and the list of types of movement below. Match each diagram to the type of movement A-E generally assigned to it the experiment. Choose the correct letter A-E and write them in boxes 30-32 on your answer sheet.Complete the summary below using words from the box.Write your answers in boxes 33-39 on your answer sheet.NB You may use any word more than once.In the experiment described in Part 2, a set of word 33…… was used to investigate whether blind and sighted people perceived the symbolism in abstract 34…… in the same way. Subjects were asked which word fitted best with a circle and which with a square. From the 35… volunteers, everyone thought a circle fitted ‘soft’ while a square fitted ‘hard’.However, only 51% of the 36…… volunteers assigned a circle to 37…… . When the test was later repeated with 38…… volunteers, it was found that they made 39…… choices.Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.Write your answer in box 40 on your answer sheet.Which of the following statements best summarises the writer’s general conclusion?A The blind represent some aspects of reality differently from sighted people.B The blind comprehend visual metaphors in similar ways to sighted people.C The blind may create unusual and effective symbols to represent reality.D The blind may be successful artists if given the right training.参考答案1. FALSE2. FALSE3. TRUE4. TRUE5. FALSE6. NOT GIVEN7. TRUE8. NOT GIVEN9. M10. E11. G12. P13. J14. B15. taste buds16. baleen/the baleen whales17. forward downward (IN EITHER ORDER, BOTH REQUIRED FOR ONE MARK)18. freshwater dolphin(s)/ the freshwater dolphin(s)19. water/the water20. lower frequencies/the lower frequencies21. bowhead humpback (IN EITHER ORDER, BOTH REQUIRED FOR ONE MARK)22. touch/sense of touch23. freshwater dolphin(s)/ the freshwater dolphin(s)24. airborne flying fish25. clear water(s)/clear open water(s)26. acoustic sense/the acoustic sense27. C28. C29. A30. E31. C32. A33. pairs34. shapes35. sighted36. sighted37. deep38. blind39. similar40. B。
剑桥雅思真题7-阅读Test 3(附答案)
剑桥雅思真题7-阅读Test 3(附答案)Reading Passage 1You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.Ant IntelligenceWhen we think of intelligent members of the animal kingdom, the creatures that spring immediately to mind are apes and monkeys. But in fact the social lives of some members of the insect kingdom are sufficiently complex to suggest more than a hint of intelligence. Among these, the world of the ant has come in for considerable scrutiny lately, and the idea that ants demonstrate sparks of cognition has certainly not been rejected by those involved in these investigations.Ants store food, repel attackers and use chemical signals to contact one another in case of attack. Such chemical communication can be compared to the human use of visual and auditory channels (as in religious chants, advertising images and jingle s, political slogans and martial music) to arouse and propagate moods and attitudes. The biologist Lewis Thomas wrote, Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids* as livestock, launch armies to war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child lab our, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.'However, in ants there is no cultural transmission -everything must be encoded in the genes -whereas in humans the opposite is true. Only basic instincts are carried in the genes of a newborn baby, other skills being learned from others in the community as the child grows up. It may seem that this cultural continuity gives us a huge advantage over ants. They have never mastered fire nor progressed. Their fungus farming and aphid herding crafts are sophisticated when compared to the agricultural skills of humans five thousand years ago but been totally overtaken by modern human agribusiness.Or have they? The farming methods of ants are at least sustainable. They do not ruin environments or use enormous amounts of energy. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the crop farming of ants may be more sophisticated and adaptable than was thought.Ants were farmers fifty million years before humans were. Ants can't digest the cellulose in leaves - but some fungi can. They therefore cultivate these fungi in their nests, bringing them leaves to feed on, and then use them as a source of food. Farmer ants secrete antibiotics to control other fungi that might ac t as 'weeds', and spread waste to fertilize the crop.It was once thought that the fungus that ants cultivate was a single type that they had propagated, essentially unchanged from the distant past. Not so. Ulrich Mueller of Maryland and his colleagues genetically screened 8 62 different types of fungi taken from ants' nests. These turned out to be highly diverse: it seems that ants are continually domesticating new species. Even more impressively, DNA analysis of the fungi suggests that the ants improve or modify the fungi by regularly swapping and sharing strains with neighbouring ant colonies.Whereas prehistoric man had no exposure to urban lifestyles - the forcing house of intelligence -the evidence suggests that ants have lived in urban settings for close on a hundred million years, developing and maintaining underground cities of specialised chambers and tunnels.When we survey Mexico City, Tokyo, Los Angeles, we are amazed at what has been accomplishedby humans. Yet Hoelldobler and Wilson's magnificent work for ant lovers, The Ants, describes a supercolony of the ant Formica yessensis on the Ishikari Coast of Hokkaido. This 'megalopolis' was reported to be compose d of 360 million workers and a million queens living in 4, 500 interconnected nests a cross a territory of 2.7 square kilometres.Such enduring and intricately meshed levels of technical achievement outstrip by far anything achieved by our distant ancestors. We hail as masterpieces the cave paintings in southern France and elsewhere, dating back some 20,000 years. Ant societies existed in something like their present form more than seventy million years ago. Beside this, prehistoric ma n looks technologically primitive. Is this then some kind of intelligence, albeit of a different kind? Research conducted at Oxford, Sussex and Zurich Universities has shown that when desert ants return from a foraging trip, they navigate by integrating bearings and distances, which they continuously update in their heads. They combine the evidence of visual landmarks with a mental library of local directions, all within a framework which is consulted and updated. So ants can learn too.And in a twelve-year programmed of work, Ryabko and Reznikova have found evidence that ants can transmit very complex messages. Scouts who had located food in a maze returned to mobilise their foraging teams. They engaged in contact sessions, at the end of which the scout was removed in order to observe what her team might do. Often the foragers proceeded to the exact spot in the maze where the food had been. Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent the foraging team using odor clues. Discussion now centres on whether the route through the maze is communicated as a 'left-right' sequence of turns or as a 'compass bearing and distance ' message.During the course of this exhaustive study, Reznikova has grown so attached to her laboratory ants that she feels she knows them as individuals - even without the paint spots used to mark them. It's no surprise that Edward Wilson, in his essay, 'In the company of ants', advises readers who ask what to do with the ants in their kitchen to: 'Watch where you step. Be careful of little lives.' Question 1-6Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage1. Ants use the same channels of communication as humans do.2. City life is one factor that encourages the development of intelligence.3. Ants can build large cities more quickly than humans do.4. Some ants can find their way by making calculations based on distance and position.5. In one experiment, foraging teams were able to use their sense of smell to find food.6. The essay, ‘In the company of ants’, explores ant communication.Question 7-13Complete the summary using the list of words, A-O, below.Write the correct letter, A-O, in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.Ants have sophisticated methods of farming, including herding livestock and growing crops, which are in many ways similar to those used in human agriculture. The ants cultivate a largenumber of different species of edible fungi which convert 7 …………into a form which they can digest. They use their own natural8………… as weed-killers and also use unwanted materials as 9………… Genetic analysis shows they constantly upgrade these fungi by developing new species and by 10 …………species with neighbouring ant colonies. In fact, the forming methods of ants could be said to be more advanced than human agribusiness, since they use 11 …………methods, they do not affect the 12………… and do not waste 13 ………… .You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.Population movements and geneticsA Study of the origins and distribution of human populations used to be based on archaeological and fossil evidence. A number of techniques developed since the 1950s, however, have placed the study of these subjects on a sounder and more objective footing. The best information on early population movements is now being obtained from the 'archaeology of the living body', the clues to be found in genetic material.B Recent work on the problem of when people first entered the Americas is an example of the value of these new techniques. North-east Asia and Siberia have long been accepted as the launching ground for the first human colonizers of the New World. But was there one major wave of migration across the Bering Strait into the Americas, or several? And when did this event, or events, take place?In recent years, new clues have come from research into genetics, including the distribution of genetic markers in modern Native Americans.C An important project, led by the biological anthropologist Robert Williams, focused on the variants (called Gm allotypes) of one particular protein -immunoglobin G-found in the fluid portion of human blood. All proteins 'drift', or produce variants, over the generations, and members of an interbreeding human population will share a set of such variants. Thus, by comparing the Gm allotypes of two different populations (e.g. two Indian tribes), one can establish their genetic 'distance', which itself can be calibrated to give an indication of the length of time since these populations last interbred.D Williams and his colleagues sampled the blood of over 5,000 American Indians in western North America during a twenty- year period. They found that their Gm allotypes could be divided into two groups, one of which also corresponded to the genetic typing of Central and South American Indians. Other tests showed that the Inuit (or Eskimo) and Aleut formed a third group. From this evidence it was deduced that there had been three major waves of migration across the Bering Strait. The first, Paleo-lndian, wave more than 15,000 years ago was ancestral to all Central and South American Indians. The second wave, about 14,000-12,000 years ago, brought Na-Dene hunters, ancestors of the Navajo and Apache (who only migrated south from Canada about 600 or 700 years ago). The third wave, perhaps 10,000 or 9,000 years ago, saw the migration from North-east Asia of groups ancestral to the modern Eskimo and Aleut.E How far does other research support these conclusions ?Geneticist Douglas Wallace has studied mitochondrial DNA in blood samples from three widely separated Native American groups: Pima- Papago Indians in Arizona, Maya Indians on the Y ucatan peninsula, Mexico, and Ticuna Indians in the Upper Amazon region of Brazil. As would have been predicted by Robert Williams's work, all three groups appear to be descended from the same ancestral (Paleo-lndian) population.F There are two other kinds of research that have thrown some light on the origins of the Native American population; they involve the study of teeth and of languages. The biological anthropologist Christy Turner is an expert in the analysis of changing physical characteristics in human teeth. He argues that tooth crowns and roots have a high genetic component, minimally affected by environmental and other factors. Studies carried out by Turner of many thousands of New and Old World specimens, both ancient and modern, suggest that the majority of prehistoric Americans are linked to Northern Asian populations by crown and root traits such as incisor shoveling (a scooping out on one or both surfaces of the tooth), single-rooted upper first premolars and triple-rooted lower first molars.According to Turner, this ties in with the idea of a single Paleo-lndian migration out of North Asia, which he sets at before 14,000 years ago by calibrating rates of dental micro-evolution. Tooth analyses also suggest that there were two later migrations of Na-Denes and Eskimo- Aleut.G The linguist Joseph Greenberg has, since the 1950s, argued that all Native American languages belong to a single 'Amerind' family, except for Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut - a view that gives credence to the idea of three main migrations. Greenberg is in a minority among fellow linguists, most of whom favour the notion of a great many waves of migration to account for the more than 1,000 languages spoken at one time by American Indians. But there is no doubt that the new genetic and dental evidence provides strong backing for Greenberg's view. Dates given for the migrations should nevertheless be treated with caution, except where supported by hard archaeological evidence.Question 14-19Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-GChoose the correct heading for paragraphs A-F from the list of headings below.Write the correct number, i-x, into boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.14Section A15Section A16Section A17Section A18Section A19Section AThe discussion of Williams's research indicates the periods at which early people are thought to have migrated along certain routes. There are six routes, A-F, marked on the map below. Complete the table below.Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 20 and 21 on your answer sheet.Early Population Movement to the AmericasQuestion 22-25Reading Passage 2 refers to the three-wave theory of early migration to the Americas. It also suggests in which of these three waves the ancestors of various groups of modem native Americans first reached the continent.Classify the groups named in the table below as originating fromA the first waveB the second waveC the third waveWrite the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 22-25 on your answer sheet.Choose the correct letter, A. B, C or D.Write the correct letter in box 26 on your answer sheet.26. Christy Turner's research involved the examination ofA. teeth from both prehistoric and modem Americans and Asians.B. thousands of people who live in either the New or the Old World.C. dental specimens from the majority of prehistoric Americans.D. the eating habits of American and Asian populations.Reading Passage 3You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.Forests are one of the main elements of our natural heritage. The decline of Europe's forests over the last decade and a half has led to an increasing awareness and understanding of the serious imbalances which threaten them.European countries are becoming increasingly concerned by major threats to European forests, threats which know no frontiers other than those of geography or climate: air pollution, soil deterioration, the increasing number of forest fires and sometimes even the mismanagement of our woodland and forest heritage. There has been a growing awareness of the need for countries to get together to co-ordinate their policies. In December 1990, Strasbourg hosted the first Ministerial Conference on the protection of Europe's forests. The conference brought together 31 countries from both Western and Eastern Europe. The topics discussed included the co-ordinated study of the destruction of forests, as well as how to combat forest fires and the extension of European research programs on the forest ecosystem. The preparatory work for the conference had been undertaken at two meetings of experts. Their initial task was to decide which of the many forest problems of concern to Europe involved the largest number of countries and might be the subject of joint action. Those confined to particular geographical areas, such as countries bordering the Mediterranean or the Nordic countriestherefore had to be discarded. However, this does not mean that in future they will be ignored.As a whole, European countries see forests as performing a triple function: biological, economic and recreational. The first is to act as a 'green lung' for our planet; by means of photosynthesis, forests produce oxygen through the transformation of solar energy, thus fulfilling what for humans is the essential role of an immense, non-polluting power plant. At the same time, forests provide raw materials for human activities through their constantly renewed production of wood. Finally, they offer those condemned to spend five days a week in an urban environment an unrivalled area of freedom to unwind and take part in a range of leisure activities, such as hunting, riding and hiking. The economic importance of forests has been understood since the dawn of man - wood was the first fuel. The other aspects have been recognised only for a few centuries but they are becoming more and more important. Hence, there is a real concern throughout Europe about the damage to the forest environment which threatens these three basic roles.The myth of the 'natural' forest has survived, yet there are effectively no remaining 'primary' forests in Europe. All European forests are artificial, having been adapted and exploited by man for thousands of years. This means that a forest policy is vital, that it must transcend national frontiers and generations of people, and that it must allow for the inevitable changes that take place in the forests, in needs, and hence in policy. The Strasbourg conference was one of the first events on such a scale to reach this conclusion. A general declaration was made that 'a central place in any ecologically coherent forest policy must be given to continuity over time and to the possible effects of unforeseen events, to ensure that the full potential of these forests is maintained'.That general declaration was accompanied by six detailed resolutions to assist national policy-making. The first proposes the extension and systematisation of surveillance sites to monitor forest decline. Forest decline is still poorly understood but leads to the loss of a high proportion of a tree's needles or leaves. The entire continent and the majority of species are now affected: between 30%and 50% of the tree population. The condition appears to result from the cumulative effect of a number of factors, with atmospheric pollutants the principal culprits. Compounds of nitrogen and sulphur dioxide should be particularly closely watched. However, their effects are probably accentuated by climatic factors, such as drought and hard winters, or soil imbalances such as soil acidification, which damages the roots. The second resolution concentrates on the need to preserve the genetic diversity of European forests. The aim is to reverse the decline in the number of tree species or at least to preserve the 'genetic material' of all of them. Although forest fires do not affect all of Europe to the same extent, the amount of damage caused the experts to propose as the third resolution that the Strasbourg conference consider the establishment of a European databank on the subject. All information used in the development of national preventative policies would become generally available. The subject of the fourth resolution discussed by the ministers was mountain forests. In Europe, it is undoubtedly the mountain ecosystem which has changed most rapidly and is most at risk. A thinly scattered permanent population and development of leisure activities, particularly skiing, have resulted in significant long-term changes to the local ecosystems. Proposed developments include a preferential research program on mountain forests. The fifth resolution relaunched the European research network on the physiology of trees, called Eurosilva. Eurosilva should support joint European research on tree diseases and their physiological and biochemical aspects. Each country concerned could increase the number of scholarships and other financial support for doctoraltheses and research projects in this area. Finally, the conference established the framework for a European research network on forest ecosystems. This would also involve harmonising activities in individual countries as well as identifying a number of priority research topics relating to the protection of forests. The Strasbourg conference's main concern was to provide for the future. This was the initial motivation, one now shared by all 31 participants representing 31 European countries. Their final text commits them to on-going discussion between government representatives with responsibility for forests.Question 27-33Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?In boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage27. Forest problems of Mediterranean countries are to be discussed at the next meeting of experts.28. Problems in Nordic countries were excluded because they are outside the European Economic Community.29. Forests are a renewable source of raw material.30. The biological functions of forests were recognised only in the twentieth century.31. Natural forests still exist in parts of Europe.32. Forest policy should be limited by national boundaries.33. The Strasbourg conference decided that a forest policy must allow for the possibility of change.Question 34-39Look at the following statements issued by the conference.Which six of the following statements, A-J, refer to the resolutions that were issued?Match the statements with the appropriate resolutions (Questions 34-39).Write the correct letter, A-J, in boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet.35Resolution 236Resolution 337Resolution 438Resolution 539Resolution 6Question 40Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.40. What is the best title for Reading Passage 3?A. The biological, economic and recreational role of forestsB. Plans to protect the forests of EuropeC. The priority of European research into ecosystemsD. Proposals for a world-wide policy on forest management参考答案1 FALSE2 TRUE3 NOT GIVEN4 TRUE5 FALSE6 NOT GIVEN7 C8 M9 F10 D11 N12 O13 E14 iv15 vii16 x17 i18 vi19 ii20 E21 D22 C23 B24 A25 A26 A27 NOT GIVEN28 FALSE29 TRUE30 FALSE31 FALSE32 FALSE33 TRUE34 J35 A36 E37 B38 G39 D40 B。
剑桥雅思真题5-阅读Test1(附答案)
剑桥雅思真题5-阅读Test1(附答案)Reading Passage 1You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.Johnson’s DictionaryFor the century before Johnson’s Dictionary was published in 1775, there had been concern about the state of the English language. There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no agreement as to the best way of bringing some order to the chaos of English spelling. Dr Johnson provided the solution.There had, of course, been dictionaries in the past, the first of these being a little book of some 120 pages, compiled by a certain Robert Cawdray, published in 1604 under the title A Table Alphabeticall ‘of hard usuall English wordes’. Like the various dictionaries that came after it during the seventeenth century, Cawdray’s tended to concentrate on ‘scholarly’ words; one function of the dictionary was to enable its student to convey an impression of fine learning.Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer —lexical as well as social and commercial. it is highly appropriate that Dr Samuel Johnson, the very model of an eighteenth-century literary man, as famous in his own time as in ours, should have published his Dictionary at the very beginning of the heyday of the middle class.Johnson was a poet and critic who raised common sense to the heights of genius. His approach to the problems that had worried writers throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was intensely practical. Up until his time, the task of producing a dictionary on such a large scale had seemed impossible without the establishment of an academy to make decisions about right and wrong usage. Johnson decided he did not need an academy to settle arguments about language; he would write a dictionary himself and he would do it single-handed. Johnson signed the contract for the Dictionary with the bookseller Robert Dosley at a breakfast held at the Golden Anchor Inn near Holbom Bar on 18 June 1764.He was to be paid £1.575 in instalments, and from this he took money to rent Gough Square, in which he set up his ‘dictionary workshop’.James Boswell, his biographer, described the garret where Johnson worked as ‘fitted up like a counting house’ with a long desk running down the middle at which the copying clerks would work standing up. Johnson himself was stationed on a rickety chair at an ‘old crazy deal table’ surrounded by a chaos of borrowed books. He was also helped by six assistants, two of whom died whilst the Dictionary was still in preparation.The work was immense; filling about eighty large notebooks (and without a library to hand), Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words, and illustrated their many meanings with some 114,000 quotations drawn from English writing on every subject, from the Elizabethans to his own time. He did not expect to achieve complete originality. Working to a deadline, he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries, and to make his work one of heroic synthesis. In fact, it was very much more. Unlike his predecessors, Johnson treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning. He adopted his definitions on theprinciple of English common law — according to precedent. After its publication, his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century.After many vicissitudes the Dictionary was finally published on 15 April 1775. It was instantly recognised as a landmark throughout Europe. ‘This very noble work,’ wrote the leading Italian lexicographer, ‘will be a perpetual monument of Fame to the Author, an Honour to his own Country in particular, and a general Benefit to the republic of Letters throughout Europe.’ The fact that Johnson had taken on the Academies of Europe and matched them (everyone knew that forty French academics had taken forty years to produce the first French national dictionary) was cause for much English celebration.Johnson had worked for nine years, ‘with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow’. For all its faults and eccentricities his two-volume work is a masterpiece and a landmark, in his own words, ‘setting the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the significations of English words’. It is the cornerstone of Standard English an achievement which, in James Boswell’s words ‘conferred stability on the language of his country.’The Dictionary, together with his other writing, made Johnson famous and so well esteemed that his friends were able to prevail upon King George Ⅲto offer him a pension. From then on, he was to become the Johnson of folklore.Questions 1-3Choose THREE letters A-H.Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.NB Your answers may be given in any order.Which THREE of the following statements are true of Johnson’s Dictionary?A It avoided all scholarly words.B It was the only English dictionary in general use for 200 years.C It was famous because of the large number of people involved.D It focused mainly on language from contemporary texts.E There was a time limit for its completion.F It ignored work done by previous dictionary writers.G It took into account subtleties of meaning.H Its definitions were famous for their originality.Questions 4-7Complete the summary.Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 4-7 on your answer sheet.In 1764 Dr Johnson accepted the contract to produce a dictionary. Having rented a garret, he took on a number of 4…………, who stood at a long central desk. Johnson did not have a 5………… available to him, but eventually produced definitions of in excess of 40,000 words written down in 80 large notebooks. On publications, the Dictionary was immediately hailed in many European countries as a landmark. According to his biographer, James Boswell, Johnson’s principal achievement was to bring 6………… to the English language. As a reward for his hard work, he was granted a 7………by the king.Questions 8-13Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this8 The growing importance of the middle classes led to an increased demand for dictionaries.9 Johnson has become more well known since his death.10 Johnson had been planning to write a dictionary for several years.11 Johnson set up an academy to help with the writing of his Dictionary.12 Johnson only received payment for his Dictionary on its completion.13 Not all of the assistants survived to see the publication of the Dictionary.Reading Passage 2You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2below.Nature or NurtureA A few years ago, in one of the most fascinating and disturbing experiments in behavioural psychology. Stanley Milgram of Yale University tested 40 subjects from all walks of life for their willingness to obey instructions given by a 'leader in a situation in which the subjects might feel a personal distaste for the actions they were called upon to perform. Specifically, Milgram told each volunteer 'teacher-subject' that the experiment was in the noble cause of education, and was designed to test whether or not punishing pupils for their mistakes would have a positive effect on the pupils’ ability to learn.B Milgram's experimental set-up involved placing the teacher-subject before a panel of thirty switches with labels ranging from ‘15 volts of electricity (slight shock)' to ‘450 volts (danger -severe shock)' in steps of 15 volts each. The teacher-subject was told that whenever the pupil gave the wrong answer to a question, a shock was to be administered, beginning at the lowest level and increasing in severity with each successive wrong answer. The supposed 'pupil’ was in reality an actor hired by Milgram to simulate receiving the shocks by emitting a spectrum of groans, screams and writhings together with an assortment of statements and expletives denouncing both the experiment and the experimenter. Milgram told the teacher-subject to ignore the reactions of the pupil, and to administer whatever level of shock was called for, as per the rule governing the experimental situation of the moment.C As the experiment unfolded, the pupil would deliberately give the wrong answers to questions posed by the teacher, thereby bringing on various electrical punishments, even up to the danger level of 300 volts and beyond. Many of the teacher-subjects balked at administering the higher levels of punishment, and turned to Milgram with questioning looks and/or complaints about continuing the experiment. In these situations, Milgram calmly explained that the teacher-subject was to ignore the pupil's cries for mercy and carry on with the experiment. If the subject was still reluctant to proceed, Milgram said that it was important for the sake of the experiment that the procedure be followed through to the end. His final argument was, 'You have no other choice. You must go on'. What Milgram was trying to discover was the number of teacher-subjects who would be willing to administer the highest levels of shock, even in the face of strong personal and moral revulsion against the rules and conditions of the experiment.D Prior to carrying out the experiment, Milgram explained his idea to a group of 39 psychiatrists and asked them to predict the average percentage of people in an ordinary population who would be willing to administer the highest shock level of 450 volts. The overwhelming consensus was that virtually all the teacher-subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter. The psychiatrists felt that 'most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts' and they further anticipated that only four per cent would go up to 300 volts. Furthermore, they thought that only a lunatic fringe of about one in 1000 would give the highest shock of 450 volts.E What were the actual results? Well, over 60 per cent of the teacher-subjects continued to obey Milgram up to the 450-volt limit! In repetitions of the experiment in other countries, the percentage of obedient teacher-subjects was even higher, reaching 85 per cent in one country. How can we possibly account for this vast discrepancy between what calm, rational, knowledgeable people predict in the comfort of their study and what pressured, flustered, but cooperative 'teachers' actually do in the laboratory of real life?F One's first inclination might be to argue that there must be some sort of built-in animal aggression instinct that was activated by the experiment, and that Milgram's teacher-subjects were just following a genetic need to discharge this pent-up primal urge onto the pupil by administering the electrical shock. A modern hard-core sociobiologist might even go so far as to claim that this aggressive instinct evolved as an advantageous trait, having been of survival value to our ancestors in their struggle against the hardships of life on the plains and in the caves, ultimately finding its way into our genetic make-up as a remnant of our ancient animal ways.G An alternative to this notion of genetic programming is to see the teacher-subjects' actions as a result of the social environment under which the experiment was carried out. As Milgram himself pointed out, 'Most subjects in the experiment see their behaviour in a larger context that is benevolent and useful to society - the pursuit of scientific truth. The psychological laboratory has a strong claim to legitimacy and evokes trust and confidence in those who perform there. An action such as shocking a victim, which in isolation appears evil, acquires a completely different meaning when placed in this setting.'H Thus, in this explanation the subject merges his unique personality and personal and moral code with that of larger institutional structures, surrendering individual properties like loyalty, self-sacrifice and discipline to the service of malevolent systems of authority.I Here we have two radically different explanations for why so many teacher-subjects were willing to forgo their sense of personal responsibility for the sake of an institutional authority figure. The problem for biologists, psychologists and anthropologists is to sort out which of these two polar explanations is more plausible. This, in essence, is the problem of modern sociobiology -to discover the degree to which hard-wired genetic programming dictates, or at least strongly biases, the interaction of animals and humans with their environment, that is, their behaviour. Put another way, sociobiology is concerned with elucidating the biological basis of all behaviour. Question 14-19Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-I.Which paragraph contains the following information?Write the correct letter A-I in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.14. a biological explanation of the teacher-subjects’ behaviour15. the explanation Milgram gave the teacher-subjects for the experiment16. the identity of the pupils17. the expected statistical outcome18. the general aim of sociobiological study19. the way Milgram persuaded the teacher-subjects to continueQuestion 20-22Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.Write your answers in boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet.20. The teacher-subjects were told that they were testing whetherA. a 450-volt shock was dangerous.B. punishment helps learning.C. the pupils were honest.D. they were suited to teaching.21. The teacher-subjects were instructed toA. stop when a pupil asked them to.B. denounce pupils who made mistakes.C. reduce the shock level after a correct answer.D. give punishment according to a rule.22. Before the experiment took place the psychiatristsA. believed that a shock of 150 volts was too dangerous.B. failed to agree on how the teacher-subjects would respond to instructions.C. underestimated the teacher-subjects’ willingness to comply with experimental procedure.D. thought that many of the teacher-subjects would administer a shock of 450 volts.Question 23-26Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this23. Several of the subjects were psychology students at Yale University.24. Some people may believe that the teacher-subjects’ behaviour could be explained positive survival mechanism.25. In a sociological explanation, personal values are more powerful than authority.26. Milgram’s experiment solves an important question in sociobiology.Reading Passage 3You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 2below.The truth about the EnvironmentFor many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out; that the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat; that species are becoming extinct in vast numbers, and that the planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.But a quick look at the facts shows a different picture. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so, since the book The Limits to Growth was published in1972 by a group of scientists. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species are indeed becoming extinct only about 0.7% of them are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been exaggerated, or are transient -associated with the early phases of industrialisation and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it. One form of pollution - the release of greenhouse gases that causes global warming - does appear to be a phenomenon that is going to extend well into our future, but its total impact is unlikely to pose a devastating problem. A bigger problem may well turn out to be an inappropriate response to it.Yet opinion polls suggest that many people nurture the belief that environmental standards are declining and four factors seem to cause this disjunction between perception and reality.One is the lopsidedness built into scientific research. Scientific funding goes mainly to areas with many problems. That may be wise policy, but it will also create an impression that many more potential problems exist than is the case.Secondly, environmental groups need to be noticed by the mass media. They also need to keep the money rolling in. Understandably, perhaps, they sometimes overstate their arguments. In 1997, for example, the World Wide Fund for Nature issued a press release entitled:'Two thirds of the world’s forests lost forever'. The truth turns out to be nearer 20%.Though these groups are run overwhelmingly by selfless folk, they nevertheless share many of the characteristics of other lobby groups. That would matter less if people applied the same degree of scepticism to environmental lobbying as they do to lobby groups in other fields. A trade organisation arguing for, say, weaker pollution controls is instantly seen as self-interested. Yet a green organisation opposing such a weakening is seen as altruistic, even if an impartial view of the controls in question might suggest they are doing more harm than good.A third source of confusion is the attitude of the media. People are clearly more curious about bad news than good. Newspapers and broadcasters are there to provide what the public wants. That, however, can lead to significant distortions of perception. An example was America^ encounter with El Nino in 1997 and 1998. This climatic phenomenon was accused of wrecking tourism, causing allergies, melting the ski-slopes and causing 22 deaths. However, according to an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the damage it did was estimated at US$4 billion but the benefits amounted to some US$19 billion. These came from higher winter temperatures (which saved an estimated 850 lives, reduced heating costs and diminished spring floods caused by meltwaters).The fourth factor is poor individual perception. People worry that the endless rise in the amount of stuff everyone throws away will cause the world to run out of places to dispose of waste. Yet, even if America's trash output continues to rise as it has done in the past, and even if the American population doubles by 2100, all the rubbish America produces through the entire 21st century will still take up only one-12,000th of the area of the entire United States.So what of global warming? As we know, carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm. The best estimates are that the temperatures will rise by 2-3°C in this century, causing considerable problems, at a total cost of US$5,000 billion.Despite the intuition that something drastic needs to be done about such a costly problem, economic analyses clearly show it will be far more expensive to cut carbon dioxide emissionsradically than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures. A model by one of the main authors of the United Nations Climate Change Panel shows how an expected temperature increase of 2.1 degrees in 2100 would only be diminished to an increase of 1.9 degrees. Or to put it another way, the temperature increase that the planet would have experienced in 2094 would be postponed to 2100.So this does not prevent global warming, but merely buys the world six years. Yet the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, for the United States alone, will be higher than the cost of solving the worlds single, most pressing health problem: providing universal access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Such measures would avoid 2 million deaths every year, and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill.It is crucial that we look at the facts if we want to make the best possible decisions for the future. It may be costly to be overly optimistic - but more costly still to be too pessimistic.Question 27-32Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the writer's claimsFALSE if the statement contradicts the writer's claimsNOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this27. Environmentalists take a pessimistic view of the world for a number of reasons.28. Data on the Earth's natural resources has only been collected since 1972.29. The number of starving people in the world has increased in recent years.30. Extinct species are being replaced by new species.31. Some pollution problems have been correctly linked to industrialisation.32. It would be best to attempt to slow down economic growth.Question 33-37Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.Write your answers in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet.33. What aspect of scientific research does the writer express concern about in paragraph 4?A. the need to produce resultsB. the lack of financial supportC. the selection of areas to researchD. the desire to solve every research problem34. The writer quotes from the Worldwide Fund for Nature to illustrate howA. influential the mass media can be.B. effective environmental groups can be.C. the mass media can help groups raise funds.D. environmental groups can exaggerate their claims.35. What is the writer’s main point about lobby groups in paragraph 6?A. Some are more active than others.B. Some are better organised than others.C. Some receive more criticism than others.D. Some support more important issues than others.36. The writer suggests that newspapers print items that are intended toA. educate readers.B. meet their readers' expectations.C. encourage feedback from readers.D. mislead readers.37. What does the writer say about America’s waste problem?A. It will increase in line with population growth.B. It is not as important as we have been led to believe.C. It has been reduced through public awareness of the issues.D. It is only significant in certain areas of the country.Question 38-40Complete the summary with the list of words A-I below.Drag the correct letter A-I into boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.The writer admits that global warming is a 38………… challenge, but says that it will not have a catastrophic impact on our future, if we deal with it in the 39………… way. If we try to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases, he believes that it would only have a minimal impact on rising temperatures. He feels it would be better to spend money on the more 40………… health problem of providing the world’s population with clean drinking water.参考答案1-3 (IN ANY ORDER) D E G4 clerks / copying clerks5 library6 stability7 pension8 TRUE9 FALSE10 NOT GIVEN11 FALSE12 FALSE13 TRUE14 F15 A16 B17 D18 I19 C20 B21 D22 C23 NOT GIVEN24 TRUE25 FALSE26 FALSE27 YES28 NOT GIVEN29 NO30 NOT GIVEN31 YES32 NO33 C34 D35 C36 B37 B38 E39 D40 I。
11月4日雅思阅读机经真题答案及解析
11月4日雅思阅读机经真题答案及解析一、考试概述:本次考试的文章两篇新题一篇旧题,第一篇描述了两个科学家在撒哈拉的发现,研究了古代人的生存方式,第二篇是讲了利用心理学对课堂行为进行研究,第三篇是讲非语言交流的,人类除了用语言交流,其他手势、行为等的非语言形式也很重要二、具体题目分析Passage 1:题目:Human Remain in Green Sahara题型:判断题4 +简答题3+填空题6新旧程度:旧题文章大意:描述了两个科学家在撒哈拉的发现,研究古代人的生存方式。
参考文章:Human Remain in Green SaharaAOn October 13,2,000, a small team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago clambered out of three battered Land Rovers, filled their water bottles, and scattered on foot across the toffee-colored sands of the Tenere desert in northern Niger. The Tenere,on the southern flank of the Sahara, easily ranks among the most desolate landscapes on Earth. The Tuareg,turbaned nomads who for centurieshave ruled this barren realm, refer to it as a “desert within a desert”a California-size ocean of sand and rock, where a single massive dune might stretch a hundred miles, and the combination of 120-degreeheat and inexorable winds can wick the water from a human body in less than a day. The harsh conditions, combined with intermittent conflict between the Tuareg and the Niger government, have kept the region largely unexplored.BMike Hettwer, a photographer accompanying the team, headed off by himself toward a trio of small dunes. He crested the first slope and stared in amazement. The dunes were spilling over with bones. He took a few shots with his digital camera and hurried back to the Land Rovers. ‘I found some bones:’Hettwer said, when the team had regrouped. “But they’re not dinosaurs. They’re human.”CIn the spring of 2005 Sereno contacted Elena Garcea, an archaeologist at the University of Cassino, in Italy, inviting her to accompany him on a return to the site. Garcea had spent three decades working digs along the Nile in Sudan and in the mountains of the Libyan Desert, and was well acquainted with the ancient peoples of the Sahara. But she had never heard of Paul Sereno. His claim to have found so many skeletons in one place seemed far fetched, given that no other Neolithic cemeterycontained more than a dozen or so. Some archaeologists would later be skeptical; one sniped that he was just a ‘moonlighting paleontologist.’But Garcea was too intrigued to dismiss him as an interloper. She agreed to join him.DGarcea explained that the Kiffian were a fishing-based culture and lived during the earliest wet period, between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago. She held a Kiffian sherd next to a Tenerian one. “What is so amazing is that the people who made these two pots lived more than a thousand years apart.EOver the next three weeks, Sereno and Garcea-- along with five American excavators, five Tuareg guides, and five soldiers from Niger’s army, sent to protect the camp from bandits-- made a detailed map of the site, which they dubbed Gobero, after the Tuareg name for the area. They exhumed eight burials and collected scores of artifacts from both cultures. In a dry lake bed adjacent to the dunes, they found dozens of fishhooks and harpoons carved from animal bone. Apparently the Kiffian fishermen weren’t just going after small fry: Scattered near the dunes were the remains of Nile perch, a beast of a fish that can weigh nearly 300 pounds, as well as crocodile and hippo bones.FSereno flew home with the most important skeletons and artifacts and immediately began planning for the next field season. In the meantime, he carefully removed one tooth from each of four skulls and sent them to a lab for radiocarbon dating. The results pegged the age of the tightly bundled burial sat roughly 9,000 years old, the heart of the Kiffian era. The smaller ‘sleeping’skeletons turned out to be about 6,000 years old, well within the Tenerian period. At least now the scientists knew who was who.G In the fall of 2006 they returned to Gobero, accompanied by a larger dig crew and six additional scientists. Garcea hoped to excavate some80 burials, and the team began digging. As the skeletons began to emerge from the dunes, each presented a fresh riddle, especially the Tenerian. A male skeleton had been buried with a finger in his mouth.HEven at the site, Arizona State University bioarchaeologist Chris Stojanowski could begin to piece together some clues. Judging by the bones, the Kiffian appeared t o be a peaceful, hardworking people. “The lack of head and forearm injuries suggests they weren’t doing much fighting,” he told me. “And these guys were strong.” He pointed to a long,narrow ridge running along a femur. “That’s the muscle attachment,” he said. “This individual had huge leg muscles, which means he was eating a lot of protein and had a strenuous lifestyle-- bothconsistent with a fishing way of life.” For contrast, he showed me the femur of a Tenerian male. The ridge was barely perceptible. “T his guy had a much less strenuous lifestyle,” he said, “which you might expect of a herder.”IStojanowski’s assessment that the Tenerian were herders fits the prevailing view among scholars of life in the Sahara 6,000 years ago, when drier conditions favored herding over hunting. But if the Tenerian were herders, Sereno pointed out, where were the herds? Among the hundreds of animal bones that had turned up at the site, none belonged to goats or sheep, and only three came from a cow species. “It’s not unusual for a herding culture not to slaughter their cattle, particularly in a cemetery,M Garcea responded, noting that even modem pastoralists, such as Niger’s Wodaabe, are loath to butcher even one animal in their herd. Perhaps, Sereno reasoned, the Tenerian at Gobero were a transitional group that had not fully adopted herding and still relied heavily on hunting and fishing.JBack in Arizona, Stojanowski continues to analyze the Gobero bones for clues to the Green Saharans’health and diet. Other scientists are trying to derive DNA from the teeth, which could reveal the genetic origins of the Kiffian and Tenerian —and possibly link them todescendants living today. Sereno and Garcea estimate a hundred burials remain to be excavated. But as the harsh Tenere winds continue to erode the dunes, time is running out. “Every archaeological site has a life cycle,” Garcea said. “It begins when people begin to use the place, followed by disuse, then nature takes over, and finally it is gone. Gobero is at the end of its life.”。
雅思阅读真题附答案(完整版)
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雅思阅读真题附答案版(部分内容):题型:人名观点配对他在寻找古老的湖泊,这名Mungo 女子是被火葬的 A持怀疑态度的教授对一些化石的DNA 进行了可靠的分析 E教授测定的人的年龄要比62000 年前年轻的多的结果 A确定Mungo 人的年龄,争议了澳大利亚人的起源 B在澳洲,研究小组谁先恢复生物的证据,发现尼安德特人 C年代的支持者认为澳大利亚巨型动物的灭绝是由于古代人类狩猎造成的 D多区域的解释已经被提出,而不是坚持认为单一的起源 B史前人类活动导致气候变化而不是巨型动物的灭绝 A判断题Mungo 湖仍然为考古学家提供了图解说明人类活动的证据True在Mungo 湖发现Mungo 使用的武器Not givenMungo 人是在复杂的文化世界上已知最古老的考古证据之一,如埋葬仪式TrueMungo 男人和女人的骨架是被发现在同一年False澳大利亚教授使用古老的研究方法对“走出非洲”支持者的批判Not given以上就是关于雅思阅读真题附答案的相关汇总,考生可以通过上方下载完整版历年雅思阅读真题解析,提升资深雅思阅读能力。
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当你一味的去挑剔指责别人的时候,有没有反思过是否?假如你的心太过自我不懂得经营和善待,不懂得尊重他人感受,那你永远也不会获得真和幸福 ⋯ ⋯人生就像一场旅行,我们所行走的每一步都是在丰富生命的意义。
雅思阅读真题文章:失落城市
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剑桥雅思真题4-阅读test3(附答案)
剑桥雅思真题4-阅读test3(附答案)Reading Passage 1You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.Although small-scale business training and credit programs have become more common throughout the world, relatively little attention has been paid to the need to direct such opportunities to young people. Even less attention has been paid to children living on the street or in difficult circumstances.Over the past nine years, Street Kids International (S.K.I.) has been working with partner organisations in Africa, Latin America and India to support the economic lives of street children. The purpose of this paper is to share some of the lessons S.K.I. and our partners have learned.BackgroundTypically, children do not end up on the streets due to a single cause, but to a combination of factors: a dearth of adequately funded schools, the demand for income at home, family breakdown and violence. The street may be attractive to children as a place to find adventurous play and money. However, it is also a place where some children are exposed, with little or no protection, to exploitative employment, urban crime, and abuse.Children who work on the streets are generally involved in unskilled, labour-intensive tasks which require long hours, such as shining shoes, carrying goods, guarding or washing cars, and informal trading. Some may also earn income through begging, or through theft and other illegal activities. At the same time, there are street children who take pride in supporting themselves and their families and who often enjoy their work. Many children may choose entrepreneurship because it allows them a degree of independence, is less exploitative than many forms of paid employment, and is flexible enough to allow them to participate in other activities such as education and domestic tasks.Street Business PartnershipsS.K.I. has worked with partner organisations in Latin America, Africa and India to develop innovative opportunities for street children to earn income.The S.K.I. Bicycle Courier Service first started in the Sudan. Participants in this enterprise were supplied with bicycles, which they used to deliver parcels and messages, and which theywere required to pay for gradually from their wages. A similar program was taken up in Bangalore, India.Another successful project, The Shoe Shine Collective, was a partnership program with the Y.W.C.A. in the Dominican Republic. In this project, participants were lent money to purchase shoe shine boxes. They were also given a safe place to store their equipment, and facilities for individual savings plans.The Youth Skills Enterprise Initiative in Zambia is a joint program with the Red Cross Society and the Y.W.C.A. Street youths are supported to start their own small business through business training, life skills training and access to credit.Lessons learnedThe following lessons have emerged from the programs that S.K.I. and partner organisations have created.•Being an entrepreneur is not for everyone, nor for every street child. Ideally, potential participants will have been involved in the organisation's programs for at least six months, and trust and relationship-building will have already been established.•The involvement of the participants has been essential to the development of relevant programs. When children have had a major role in determining procedures, they are more likely to abide by and enforce them.•It is critical for all loans to be linked to training programs that include the development of basic business and life skills.•There are tremendous advantages to involving parents or guardians in the program, where such relationships exist. Home visits allow staff the opportunity to know where the participants live, and to understand more about each individual's situation.•Small loans are provided initially for purchasing fixed assets such as bicycles, shoe shine kits and basic building materials for a market stall. As the entrepreneurs gain experience, the enterprises can be gradually expanded and consideration can be given to increasing loan amounts. The loan amounts in S.K.I. programs have generally ranged from US$30-$100.•All S.K.I. programs have charged interest on the loans, primarily to get the entrepreneurs used to the concept of paying interest on borrowed money. Generally the rates have been modest (lower than bank rates).ConclusionThere is a need to recognise the importance of access to credit for impoverished young people seeking to fulfil economic needs. The provision of small loans to support the entrepreneurial dreams and ambitions of youth can be an effective means to help them change their lives. However, we believe that credit must be extended in association with other types of support that help participants develop critical life skills as well as productive businesses.Questions 1-4Choose the correct letter, A, B C or D.Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.1 The quotations in the box at the beginning of the articleA exemplify the effects of S.K.I.B explain why S.K.I. was set up.C outline the problems of street children.D highlight the benefits to society of S.K.I.2 The main purpose of S.K.I. is toA draw the attention of governments to the problem of street children.B provide schools and social support for street children.C encourage the public to give money to street children.D give business training and loans to street children.3 Which of the following is mentioned by the writer as a reason why children end up living on the streets?A unemploymentB warC povertyD crime4 In order to become more independent, street children mayA reject paid employment.B leave their families.C set up their own businesses.D employ other children.Questions 5-8Complete the table below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 1 for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.Questions 9-12Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?In boxes 9-12 on your answer sheet writeYES if the statement agrees with the claims of the wirterNO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writerNOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this9 Any street child can set up their own small business if given enough support.10 In some cases, the families of street children may need financial support from S.K.I.11 Only one fixed loan should be given to each child.12 The children have to pay back slightly more money than they borrowed.Question 13Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.Write your answer in box 13 on your answer sheet.The writers conclude that money should only be lent to street childrenA as part of a wider program of aid.B for programs that are not too ambitious.C when programs are supported by local businesses.D if the projects planned are realistic and useful.READING PASSAGE 2You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages.Volcanoes-earth-shattering newsWhen Mount Pinatubo suddenly erupted on 9 June 1991, the power of volcanoes past and present again hit the headlinesA Volcanoes are the ultimate earth-moving machinery. A violent eruption can blow the top few kilometres off a mountain, scatter fine ash practically all over the globe and hurl rock fragments into the stratosphere to darken the skies a continent away.But the classic eruption —cone-shaped mountain, big bang, mushroom cloud and surges of molten lava —is only a tiny part of a global story. Vulcanism, the name given to volcanic processes, really has shaped the world. Eruptions have rifted continents, raised mountain chains, constructed islands and shaped the topography of the earth. The entire ocean floor has a basement of volcanic basalt.V olcanoes have not only made the continents, they are also thought to have made the world’s first stable atmosphere and provided all the water for the oceans, rivers and ice-caps. There are now about 600 active volcanoes. Every year they add two or three cubic kilometres of rock to the continents. Imagine a similar number of volcanoes smoking away for the last 3,500 million years. That is enough rock to explain the continental crust.What comes out of volcanic craters is mostly gas. More than 90% of this gas is water vapour from the deep earth: enough to explain, over 3,500 million years, the water in the oceans. The rest of the gas is nitrogen, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, methane, ammonia and hydrogen. The quantity of these gases, again multiplied over 3,500 million years, is enough to explain the mass of the world’s atmosphere. We are alive because volcanoes provided the soil, air and water we need.B Geologists consider the earth as having a molten core, surrounded by a semi-molten mantle and a brittle, outer skin. It helps to think of a soft-boiled egg with a runny yolk, a firm but squishy white and a hard shell. If the shell is even slightly cracked during boiling, the white material bubbles out and sets like a tiny mountain chain over the crack — like an archipelago of volcanic islands such as the Hawaiian Islands. But the earth is so much bigger and the mantle below is so much hotter.Even though the mantle rocks are kept solid by overlying pressure, they can still slowly ‘flow’ like thick treacle. The flow, thought to be in the form of convection currents, is powerful enough to fracture the ‘eggshell’ of the crust into plates, and keep them bumping and grinding againsteach other, or even overlapping, at the rate of a few centimetres a year. These fracture zones, where the collisions occur, are where earthquakes happen. And, very often, volcanoes.C These zones are lines of weakness, or hot spots. Every eruption is different, but put at its simplest, where there are weaknesses, rocks deep in the mantle, heated to 1,350℃, will start to expand and rise. As they do so, the pressure drops, and they expand and become liquid and rise more swiftly.Sometimes it is slow: vast bubbles of magma —molten rock from the mantle —inch towards the surface, cooling slowly, to show through as granite extrusions (as on Skye, or the Great Whin Sill, the lava dyke squeezed out like toothpaste that carries part of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England). Sometimes — as in Northern Ireland, Wales and the Karoo in South Africa — the magma rose faster, and then flowed out horizontally on to the surface in vast thick sheets. In the Deccan plateau in western India, there are more than two million cubic kilometres of lava, some of it 2,400 metres thick, formed over 500,000 years of slurping eruption.Sometimes the magma moves very swiftly indeed. It does not have time to cool as it surges upwards. The gases trapped inside the boiling rock expand suddenly, the lava glows with heat, it begins to froth, and it explodes with tremendous force. Then the slightly cooler lava following it begins to flow over the lip of the crater. It happens on Mars, it happened on the moon, it even happens on some of the moons of Jupiter and Uranus. By studying the evidence, vulcanologists can read the force of the great blasts of the past. Is the pumice light and full of holes? The explosion was tremendous. Are the rocks heavy, with huge crystalline basalt shapes, like the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland? It was a slow, gentle eruption.The biggest eruptions are deep on the mid-ocean floor, where new lava is forcing the continents apart and widening the Atlantic by perhaps five centimetres a year. Look at maps of volcanoes, earthquakes and island chains like the Philippines and Japan, and you can see the rough outlines of what are called tectonic plates — the plates which make up the earth’s crust and mantle. The most dramatic of these is the Pacific ‘ring of fire’ where there have been the most violent explosions — Mount Pinatubo near Manila, Mount St Helen’s in the Rockies and El Chichón in Mexico about a decade ago, not to mention world-shaking blasts like Krakatoa in the Sunda Straits in 1883.D But volcanoes are not very predictable. That is because geological time is not like human time. During quiet periods, volcanoes cap themselves with their own lava by forming a powerful cone from the molten rocks slopping over the rim of the crater; later the lava cools slowly into a huge, hard, stable plug which blocks any further eruption until the pressure below becomes irresistible. In the case of Mount Pinatubo, this took 600 years.Then, sometimes, with only a small warning, the mountain blows its top. It did this at Mont Pelée in Martinique at 7.49 a.m. on 8 May, 1902. Of a town of 28,000, only two people survived. In 1815, a sudden blast removed the top 1,280 metres of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. The eruption was so fierce that dust thrown into the stratosphere darkened the skies, cancelling the following summer in Europe and North America. Thousands starved as the harvests failed, after snow in June and frosts in August. V olcanoes are potentially world news, especially the quiet ones.Questions 14-17Reading Passage 2 has four sections A-D.Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.Write the correct number i-vi in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.14 Section A15 Section B16 Section C17 Section DQuestions 18-21Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet.18 What are the sections of the earth’s crust, often associated with volcanic activity, called?19 What is the name given to molten rock from the mantle?20 What is the earthquake zone on the Pacific Ocean called?21 For how many years did Mount Pinatubo remain inactive?Questions 22-26Complete the summary below.Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.V olcanic eruptions have shaped the earth’s land surface. They may also have produced the world’s atmosphere and 22…… . Eruptions occur when molten rocks from the earth’s mantle rise and expand. When they become liquid, they move quickly through cracks in the surface. There are different types of eruption. Sometimes the 23…… . moves slowly and forms outcrops of granite on the earth’s surface. When it moves more quickly it may flow out in thick horizontal sheets. Examples of this type of eruption can be found in Northern Ireland, Wales, South Africa and 24…… . A third type of eruption occurs when the lava emerges very quickly and 25…… violently. This happens because the magma moves so suddenly that 26…… are emitted.READING PASSAGE 3You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.Obtaining Linguistic DataA Many procedures are available for obtaining data about a language. They range from a carefully planned, intensive field investigation in a foreign country to a casual introspection about one’s mother tongue carried out in an armchair at home.B In all cases, someone has to act as a source of language data —an informant. Informants are (ideally) native speakers of a language, who provide utterances for analysis and other kinds of information about the language (e.g. translations, comments about correctness, or judgements on usage). Often, when studying their mother tongue, linguists act as their own informants, judging the ambiguity, acceptability, or other properties of utterances against their own intuitions. The convenience of this approach makes it widely used, and it is considered the norm in the generativeapproach to linguistics. But a linguist’s personal judgements are often uncertain, or disagree with the judgements of other linguists, at which point recourse is needed to more objective methods of enquiry, using non-linguists as informants. The latter procedure is unavoidable when working on foreign languages, or child speech.C Many factors must be considered when selecting informants —whether one is working with single speakers (a common situation when languages have not been described before), two people interacting, small groups or large-scale samples. Age, sex, social background and other aspects of identity are important, as these factors are known to influence the kind of language used. The topic of conversation and the characteristics of the social setting (e.g. the level of formality) are also highly relevant, as are the personal qualities of the informants (e.g. their fluency and consistency). For larger studies, scrupulous attention has been paid to the sampling theory employed, and in all cases, decisions have to be made about the best investigative techniques to use.D Today, researchers often tape-record informants. This enables the linguist’s claims about the language to be checked, and provides a way of making those claims more accurate (‘difficult’ pieces of speech can be listened to repeatedly). But obtaining naturalistic, good-quality data is never easy. People talk abnormally when they know they are being recorded, and sound quality can be poor. A variety of tape-recording procedures have thus been devised to minimise the ‘observer’s paradox’ (how to observe the way people behave when they are not being observed). Some recordings are made without the speakers being aware of the fact — a procedure that obtains very natural data, though ethical objections must be anticipated. Alternatively, attempts can be made to make the speaker forget about the recording, such as keeping the tape recorder out of sight, or using radio microphones. A useful technique is to introduce a topic that quickly involves the speaker, and stimulates a natural language style (e.g. asking older informants about how times have changed in their locality).E An audio tape recording does not solve all the linguist’s problems, however. Speech is often unclear and ambiguous. Where possible, therefore, the recording has to be supplemented by the observer’s written comments on the non-verbal behaviour of the participants, and about the context in general. A facial expression, for example, can dramatically alter the meaning of what is said. Video recordings avoid these problems to a large extent, but even they have limitations (the camera cannot be everywhere), and transcriptions always benefit from any additional commentary provided by an observer.F Linguists also make great use of structured sessions, in which they systematically ask their informants for utterances that describe certain actions, objects or behaviours. With a bilingual informant, or through use of an interpreter, it is possible to use translation techniques (‘How do you say table in your language?’). A large number of points can be covered in a short time, using interview worksheets and questionnaires. Often, the researcher wishes to obtain information about just a single variable, in which case a restricted set of questions may be used: a particular feature of pronunciation, for example, can be elicited by asking the informant to say a restricted set of words. There are also several direct methods of elicitation, such as asking informants to fill in the blanks in a substitution frame (e.g. I___ see a car), or feeding them the wrong stimulus for correction (‘Is it possible to say I no can see?’).G A representative sample of language, compiled for the purpose of linguistic analysis, is known as a corpus. A corpus enables the linguist to make unbiased statements about frequency ofusage, and it provides accessible data for the use of different researchers. Its range and size are variable. Some corpora attempt to cover the language as a whole, taking extracts from many kinds of text; others are extremely selective, providing a collection of material that deals only with a particular linguistic feature. The size of the corpus depends on practical factors, such as the time available to collect, process and store the data: it can take up to several hours to provide an accurate transcription of a few minutes of speech. Sometimes a small sample of data will be enough to decide a linguistic hypothesis; by contrast, corpora in major research projects can total millions of words. An important principle is that all corpora, whatever their size, are inevitably limited in their coverage, and always need to be supplemented by data derived from the intuitions of native speakers of the language, through either introspection or experimentation.Questions 27-31Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs labeled A-G.Which paragraph contains the following information?Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.NB You may use any letter more than once.27 the effect of recording on the way people talk28 the importance of taking notes on body language29 the fact that language is influenced by social situation30 how informants can be helped to be less self-conscious31 various methods that can be used to generate specific dataQuestions 32-36Complete the table below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.Complete the summary of paragraph G below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.A linguist can use a corpus to comment objectively on 37…… . Some corpora include a wide range of language while others are used to focus on a 38…… . The length of time the process takes will affect the 39…… of the corpus. No corpus can ever cover the whole language and so linguists often find themselves relying on the additional information that can be gained from the 40…… of those who speak the language concerned.参考答案1 A2 D3 C4 C5 Sudan India (IN EITHER ORDER, BOTH REQUIRED FOR ONE MARK)6 bicycles7 Shoe Shine / Shoe Shine Collective8 life skills9 NO10 NOT GIVEN11 NO12 YES13 A14 iii15 i16 iv17 vi18 plates/the plates/the tectonic plates19 magma20 ring of fire21 600 /600 years / for 600 years22 water / the water / oceans / the oceans23 lava /magma / molten rock24 India / western India25 explodes26 gases / the gases / trapped gases27 D28 E29 C30 D31 F32 (the) linguist (acts)/(the) linguists (act)33 foreign languages34 quality / the quality / the poor quality35 non-verbal behaviour / non-verbal behavior / facial expression / facial expressions36 camera / video camera / recording / video recording37 frequency of usage / usage frequency38 particular linguistic feature39 size40 intuitions。
最新雅思G类阅读真题
最新雅思类阅读真题类阅读一篇说员工出差的报销问题:不确定能不能报销的先找(可能是其他人这个记不清了);报销要保存帐单;车票和国内国际机票国内机票只能经济舱国际的可以其他;住宿旅馆要求经常去的地区只能住单位联系的酒店有折扣其他地区星级或多少钱以下;其他文具啥的费用怎么样忘了另一篇超市招聘长期员工,面试后给,店内不让查电子邮件,要提供有住址的帐单,其他不记得了还有一篇说的几个房屋广告:楼层高的那个不适合老人和残疾人; 天花板高的那个有储物空间;附近有学校的适合家庭带小孩;有一个房子下面有双车库,另一个外边有双车库是迷惑项;有个房子需要,题目里说需要;另一个房子是房间已经过了;还有一个房子是很小但是可以扩大,并且有风格特色,忘了是不是前面其中的一个。
第四篇大阅读是鲸鱼唱歌的题,只记得大概,第一部分是选择年年一直到年都有什么成果,第二部分的前几个西岸东岸鱼群的弄得有点晕,后面选择题,问鲸鱼唱歌是小节重复还是主题重复啥的,还问了什么情况下变歌,还有同个海洋的鲸鱼,地理位置近的歌声相近之类的。
类的作文小作文向房屋中介介绍自己租房要求到一个英语国家快开始工作了全家要租房子大作文越来越便宜有人说是进步有人反对,分析两边给出自己的观点。
经验分享如下:雅思阅读:速读就是方法听力和阅读我实在没什么可以分享的,考前从来没复习过,如果说技巧的, 可以介绍一个阅读技巧,因为本人没出来之前类就考过阅读,所以有点小经验,大部分同学的问题是读不完,我觉得最重要的千万不要看不懂一句话,就没完没了的读那句话,快速的向后看,通过后面的文章理解前面的,通过问题来猜测文章大意.先通读问题,然后带着问题速读,注意一定要速读原文!!!!雅思听力:机经少看听力机井实在不建议大家看,对于要考的同志门,最好的方法就是提高自己的实力,坚持听新闻,每天分钟,就会有很明显的提高,而且对口语很有帮助如果实在要看机经,我建议大家就看看当中比较古怪的,类似于什么大猩猩行为的,主要是对一些生词熟悉。
雅思阅读官方真题一套
READING PASSAGE 1You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14 which are based on Reading Passage 1. Spider silk cuts weight of bridgesA strong, light bio-material made by genes from spiders could transform construction and industry.A Scientists have succeeded in copying the silk-producing gene of the Golden Orb Weaverspider and are using them to create a synthetic material which they believe is the model for a new generation of advanced bio-materials. The new material, biosilk, which has been spun for the first time by researchers at DuPont, has an enormous range of potential uses in construction and manufacturing.B The attraction of the silk spun by the spider is a combination of great strength and enormouselasticity, which man-made fibres have been unable to replicate. On an equal-weight basis, spider silk is far stronger than steel and it is estimated that if a single strand could be made about 10m in diameter, it would be strong enough to stop a jumbo jet in flight. A third important factor is that it is extremely light. Army scientists are already looking at the possibilities of using it for lightweight, bullet-proof vests and parachutes.C For some time, biochemists have been trying to synthesise the drag-line silk of the Golden OrbWeaver. The drag-line silk, which forms the radial arms of the web, is stronger than the other parts of the web and some biochemists believe a synthetic version could prove to be as important a material as nylon, which has been around for 50 years, since the discoveries of Wallace Carothers and his team ushered in the age of polymers.D To recreate the material, scientists, including Randolph Lewis at the University of Wyoming,first examined the silk-producing gland of the spider. "We took out the glands that produce the silk and looked at the coding for the protein material they make, which is spun into a web. We then went looking for clones with the right DNA," he says.E At DuPont, researchers have used both yeast and bacteria as hosts to grow the raw material,which they have spun into fibres. Robert Dorsch, DuPont’s director of biochemical development, says the globules of protein, comparable with marbles in an egg, are harvested and processed. "We break open the bacteria, separate out the globules of protein and use them as the raw starting material. With yeast, the gene system can be designed so that the material excretes the protein outside the yeast for better access," he says.F "The bacteria and the yeast produce the same protein, equivalent to that which the spider usesin the drag lines of the web. The spider mixes the protein into a water-based solution and then spins it into a solid fibre in one go. Since we are not as clever as the spider and we are not using such sophisticated organisms, we substituted man-made approaches and dissolved the protein in chemical solvents, which are then spun to push the material through small holes to form the solid fibre.”G Researchers at DuPont say they envisage many possible uses for a new biosilk material. Theysay that earthquake-resistant suspension bridges hung from cables of synthetic spider silk fibres may become a reality. Stronger ropes, safer seat belts, shoe soles that do not wear out so quickly and tough new clothing are among the other applications. Biochemists such as Lewis see the potential range of uses of biosilk as almost limitless. "It is very strong and retains elasticity; there are no man-made materials that can mimic both these properties. It is also a biological material with all the advantages that has over petrochemicals," he says.H At DuPond’s laboratories, Dorsc h is excited by the prospect of new super-strong materials buthe warns they are many years away. "We are at an early stage but theoretical predictions are that we will wind up with a very strong, tough material, with an ability to absorb shock, which is stronger and tougher than the man-made materials that are conventionally available to us," he says.I The spider is not the only creature that has aroused the interest of material scientists. They havealso become envious of the natural adhesive secreted by the sea mussel. It produces a protein adhesive to attach itself to rocks. It is tedious and expensive to extract the protein from the mussel, so researchers have already produced a synthetic gene for use in surrogate bacteria.Questions 1-5The passage has nine paragraphs A-I.Which paragraph contains the following information?Write the correct letter A-I in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.1 a comparison of the ways two materials are used to replace silk-producing glands2 predictions regarding the availability of the synthetic silk3 on-going research into other synthetic materials4 the research into the part of the spider that manufactures silk5 the possible application of the silk in civil engineeringQuestions 6- 11Complete the flow chart below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 6-11 on your answer sheet..Synthetic gene growth in 6_______ or 7_________globules of 8 ________dissolved in 9__________passed through 10 ________to produce 11 ___________Questions 12- 14Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 12-14 on your answer sheet writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this12 Biosilk has already replaced nylon in parachute manufacture.13 The spider produces silk of varying strengths.14 Lewis and Dorsch co-operated in the synthetic production of silk.READING PASSAGE 2You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2.TEACHING IN UNIVERSITIESIn the 19th century, an American academic, Newman, characterised a university as: “a place of teaching universal kn owledge…(a plane for) thediffusion and extension of knowledge rather than its advancement.”Newman argued that if universities were not for teaching but rather for scientific discovery, then they would not need students.Interestingly, during this century, while still teaching thousands of students each year, the resources of most universities have been steadily channelled away from teaching into research activities. Most recently, however, there have been strong moves in both North America and the United Kingdom to develop initiatives that would enhance the profile of the teaching institutions of higher education. In the near future, therefore, as well as the intrinsic rewards gained from working with students and the sense that they are contributing to their overall growth and development, there should soon be extrinsic rewards, in the form of job promotion, for those pursuing academic excellence in teaching in universities.In the future, there will be more focus in universities on the quality of their graduates and their progression rates. Current degree courses, whose assessment strategies require students to learn by rote and reiterate the course material, and which do not require the student to interact with the material, or construct a personal meaning about it or even to understand the discipline, are resulting in poor learning outcomes. This traditional teaching approach does not take into account modern theories of education, the individual needs of the learner, nor his or her prior learning experience.In order for universities to raise both the quality and status of teaching, it is first necessary to have some kind of understanding of what constitutes good practice. A 1995 report, compiled in Australia, lists eight qualities that researchers agree are essential to good teaching.Good teachers...A are themselves good learners - resulting in teaching that is dynamic, reflective and constantlyevolving as they learn more and more about teaching;B display enthusiasm for their subject and the desire to share it with their students;C recognise the importance of context and adjust their teaching accordingly;D encourage deep learning approaches and are concerned with developing their students' criticalthinking skills, problem solving skills and problem-approach behaviours:E demonstrate an ability to transform and extend knowledge, rather than merely transmit it;F recognise individual differences in their students and take advantage of these;G set clear goals, use valid assessment techniques and provide high-quality feedback to theirstudents;In addition to aiming to engage students in the learning process, there is also a need to address the changing needs of the marketplace. Because in many academic disciplines the body of relevant knowledge is growing at an exponential rate, it is no longer possible, or even desirable, for an individual to have a complete knowledge base. Rather, it is preferable that he or she should have an understanding of the concepts and the principles of the subject, have the ability to apply this understanding to new situations and have the wherewithal to seek out the information that is needed.As the world continues to increase in complexity, university graduates will need to be equipped to cope with rapid changes in technology and to enter careers that may not yet be envisaged, with change of profession being commonplace. To produce graduates equipped for this workforce, it is essential that educators teach in ways that encourage learners to engage in deep learning, which may be built upon in the later years of their course, and also be transferred to the workplace.The new role of the university teacher, then, is one that focuses on the students' learning rather than the instructor's teaching. The syllabus is more likely to move from being a set of learning materials made up of lecture notes, to a set of learning materials made up of print, cassettes, disks and computer programs. Class contact hours will cease to be the major determinant of an academic workload. The teacher will then be released from being the sole source of information transmission and will become instead more a learning manager, able to pay more attention to the development and delivery of education rather than content.Student-centred learning activities will also require innovative assessment strategies. Traditional assessment and reporting has aimed to produce a single mark or grade for each student. The mark is intended to indicate three things: the extent to which the learned material was mastered or understood; the level at which certain skills were performed and the degree to which certain attitudes were displayed.A deep learning approach would test a student’s ab ility to identify and tackle new and unfamiliar 'real world' problems. A major assessment goal will be to increase the size and complexity of assignments and minimise what can be achieved by memorising or reproducing content. Wherever possible, students will be involved in the assessment process to assist them to learn how to make judgments about themselves and their work.Questions 15-18Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?In the boxes 15-18 on your answer sheet writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this15Newman believed that the primary focus of universities was teaching.16Job promotion is already used to reward outstanding teaching.17Traditional approaches to assessment at degree level are having a negative effect on the learning process.Questions 19-23Look at the eight qualities A-H of “good teachers” in Reading Passage 2 and the statements below (Questions 19-23).Match each quality to the statement with the same meaning.Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet.Good teachers19 can adapt their materials to different learning situations.20 assist students to understand the aims of the course.21 are interested in developing the students as learners.22treat their students with dignity and concern.23continually improve their teaching by monitoring their skills.Questions 24-27Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or DWrite your answers in boxes 24-27 on your answer sheet.24 In the future, university courses will focus more onA developing students’ skills and concepts.B expanding students’ knowledge.C providing work experience for students.D graduating larger numbers of students.25 According to the author, university courses should prepare students toA do a specific job well.B enter traditional professions.C change jobs easily.D create their own jobs.26 The author believes that new learning materials in universities will result inA more work for teachers.B a new role for teachers.C more expensive courses.D more choices for students.27 The author predicts that university assessment techniques will include moreA in-class group assignments.B theoretical exams.C problem-solving activities.D student seminar presentations.READING PASSAGE 3Rising Sea LevelsADuring the night of 1st February 1953, a deadly combination of winds and tide raised the level of the North Sea, broke through the dykes which protected the Netherlands arid inundated farmland and villages as far as 64 km from the coast, killing thousands. For people around the world who inhabit low-lying areas, variations in sea levels are of crucial importance and the scientific study of oceans has attracted increasing attention. Towards the end of the 1970s, some scientists began suggesting that global warming could cause the world's oceans to rise by several metres. The warming, they claimed, was an inevitable consequence of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which acted like a greenhouse to trap heat in the air. The greenhouse warming was predicted to lead to rises in sea levels in a variety of ways. Firstly, heating the ocean water would cause it to expand. Such expansion might be sufficient to raise the sea level by 300mm in the next 100 years. Then there was the observation that in Europe's Alpine valleys glaciers had been shrinking for the past century. Meltwater from the mountain glaciers might have raised the oceans 50mm over the last 100 years and the rate is likely to increase in future. A third threat is that global warming might cause a store of frozen water in Antarctica to melt which would lead to a calamitous rise in sea level of up to five metres.BThe challenge of predicting how global warming will change sea levels led scientists of several disciplines to adopt a variety of approaches. In 1978 J H Mercer published a largely theoretical statement that a thick slab of ice covering much of West Antarctica is inherently unstable. He suggested that this instability meant that, given just 5 degrees Celsius of greenhouse warming in the south polar region, the floating ice shelves surrounding the West Antarctic ice sheet would begin to disappear. Without these buttresses the grounded ice sheet would quickly disintegrate and coastlines around the world would be disastrously flooded. In evidence Mercer pointed out that between 130,000 and 110,000 years ago there had been just such a global warming as we have had in the past 20,000 years since the last ice age. In the geological remains of that earlier period there are indications that the sea level was five metres above the current sea level- just the level that would be reached if the West Antarctic ice sheet melted. The possibility of such a disastrous rise led a group of American investigators to form SeaRISE (Sea-level Response to Ice Sheet Evolution) in 1990. SeaRISE reported the presence of Five active "ice streams" drawing ice from the interior of West Antarctica into the Ross Sea. They stated that these channels in the West Antarctic ice sheet "may be manifestations of collapse already under way."CBut doubt was cast on those dire warnings by the use of complex computer models of climate. Models of atmospheric and ocean behaviour predicted that greenhouse heating would cause warmer, wetter air to reach Antarctica, where it would deposit its moisture as snow. Thus, the sea ice surrounding the continent might even expand causing sea levels to drop. Other observations have caused scientists working on Antarctica to doubt that sea levels will be pushed upward several metres by sudden melting. For example, glaciologists have discovered that one of the largest ice streams stopped moving about 130 wars ago. Ellen Mosley-Thompson, questioning the SeaRISE theory, notes that ice streams "seem to start and stop, and nobody really knows why." Her own measurements of the rate of snow accumulation near the South Pole show that snowfalls have increased substantially in recent decades as global temperature has increased.DMost researchers are now willing to accept that human activities have contributed to global warming, but no one can say with any assurance whether the Antarctic ice cap is growing or shrinking in response.A satellite being planned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will use laser range finders to map changes in the elevation of the polar ice caps, perhaps to within 10 millimetres, and should end the speculation.EWhatever the fate of the polar ice caps may be, most researchers agree that the sea level is currently rising. That, however, is difficult to prove. Tide gauges in ports around the world have been measuring sea levels for decades but the data are flawed because the land to which the gauges are attached can itself be moving up and down. In Stockholm the data from the sea level gauge show the sea level to be falling at four millimetres a year, but that is because all Scandinavia is still rebounding after being crushed by massive glaciers during the last ice age. By contrast, the gauge at Honolulu, which is more stable, shows the sea level to be rising at a rate of one and a half millimetres a year. Unstable regions cannot be omitted from the data because that would eliminate large areas of the world. Most of the eastern seaboard of North America is still settling after a great ice sheet which covered Eastern Canada 20,000 years ago tilted it up. And then there is buckling occurring at the edges of the great tectonic plates as they are pressed against each other. There is also land subsidence as oil and underground water is tapped. In Bangkok, for example, where the residents have been using groundwater, land subsidence makes it appear as if the sea has risen by almost a metre in the past 30 years.FUsing complex calculations on the sea level gauge data, Peltier and Tushingham found that the global sea level has been rising at a rate of 2mm a year over the past few decades. Confirmation came from the TOPEX satellite which used radar altimeters to calculate changes in ocean levels. Steven Nerem, working on the TOPEX data, found an average annual sea level rise of 2mm which is completely compatible with the estimates that have come from 50 years of tide gauge records. The key question still facing researchers is whether this trend will hold steady or begin to accelerate in response to a warming climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gives the broad prediction for the next century of a rise between 200mm and 1 metre.Questions 33 - 40Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-L from the box below. Write the correct letter A-L in boxes 33-40 on your answer sheet.。
雅思阅读真题集1(附答案)
SECTION 1: QUESTIONS 1-13READING PASSAGE 1You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.William Gilbert and MagnetismAThe 16th and 17th centuries saw two great pioneers of modern science: Galileo and Gilbert. The impact of their findings is eminent. Gilbert was the first modern scientist, also the accredited father of the science of electricity and magnetism, an Englishman of learning and a physician at the court of Elizabeth. Prior to him, all that was known of electricity and magnetism was what the ancients knew, nothing more than that the lodestone possessed magnetic properties and that amber and jet, when rubbed, would attract bits of paper or other substances of small specific gravity. However, he is less well known than he deserves.BGilbert’s birth pre-dated Galileo. Born in an eminent local family in Colchester County in the UK, on May 24, 1544, he went to grammar school, and then studied medicine at St John’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1573. Later he travelled in the continent and eventually settled down in London.CHe was a very successful and eminent doctor. All this culminated in his election to the president of the Royal Science Society. He was also appointed personal physician to the Queen (Elizabeth I), and later knighted by the Queen. He faithfully served her until her death. However, he didn’t outlive the Queen for long and died on November 30, 1603, only a few months after his appointment as personal physician to King James.DGilbert was first interested in chemistry but later changed his focus due to the large portion of mysticism of alchemy involved (such as the transmutation of metal). He gradually developed his interest in physics after the great minds of the ancient, particularly about the knowledge the ancient Greeks had about lodestones, strange minerals with the power to attract iron. In the meantime, Britain became a major seafaring nation in 1588 when the Spanish Armada was defeated, opening the way to British settlement of America. British ships depended on the magnetic compass, yet no one understood why it worked. Did the Pole Star attract it, as Columbus once speculated; or was there a magnetic mountain at the pole, as described in Odyssey, which ships would never approach, because the sailors thought its pull would yank out all their iron nails and fittings? For nearly 20 years, William Gilbert conducted ingenious experiments to understand magnetism. His works include On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet of the Earth.EGilbert’s discovery was so important to modern physics. He investigated the nature of magnetism and electricity. He even coined the word “electric”. Though the early beliefs of magnetism were also largely entangled with superstitions such as that rubbing garlic on lodestone can neutralise its magnetism, one example being that sailors even believed the smell of garlic would even interfere with the action of compass, which is why helmsmen were forbidden to eat it near a ship’s compass. Gilbert also found that metals can be magnetised by rubbing materials such as fur, plastic or the like on them. He named the ends of a magnet “north pole” and “south pole”. The magnetic poles can attract or repel, depending on polarity. In addition, however, ordinary iron is always attracted to a magnet. Though he started to study the relationship between magnetism and electricity, sadly he didn’t complete it. His research of static electricity using amber and jet only demonstrated that objects with electrical charges can work like magnets attracting small pieces of paper and stuff. It is a French guy named du Fay that discovered that there are actually two electrical charges, positive and negative.FHe also questioned the traditional astronomical beliefs. Though a Copernican, he didn’t express in his quintessential beliefs whether the earth is at the centre of the universe or in orbit around the sun. However, he believed that stars are not equidistant from the earth but have their own earth-like planets orbiting around them. The earth itself is like a giant magnet, which is also why compasses always point north. They spin on an axis that is aligned with the earth’s polarity. He even likened the polarity of the magnet to the polarity of the earth and built an entire magnetic philosophy on this analogy. In his explanation, magnetism is the soul of the earth. Thus a perfectly spherical lodestone, when aligned with the earth’s poles, would wobble all by itself in 24 hours. Further, he also believed that the sun and other stars wobble just like the earth does around a crystal core, and speculated that the moon might also be a magnet caused to orbit by its magnetic attraction to the earth. This was perhaps the first proposal that a force might cause a heavenly orbit.GHis research method was revolutionary in that he used experiments rather than pure logic and reasoning like the ancient Greek philosophers did. It was a new attitude towards scientific investigation. Until then, scientific experiments were not in fashion. It was because of this scientific attitude, together with his contribution to our knowledge of magnetism, that a unit of magneto motive force, also known as magnetic potential, was named Gilbert in his honour. His approach of careful observation and experimentation rather than the authoritative opinion or deductive philosophy of others had laid the very foundation for modern science.Questions 1-7Reading 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-x in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.List of headingsi Early years of Gilbertii What was new about his scientific research methodiii The development of chemistryiv Questioning traditional astronomyv Pioneers of the early sciencevi Professional and social recognitionvii Becoming the president of the Royal Science Societyviii The great works of Gilbertix His discovery about magnetismx His change of focus1 _____ Paragraph A2 _____ Paragraph B3 _____ Paragraph C4 _____ Paragraph D5 _____ Paragraph E6 _____ Paragraph F7 _____ Paragraph GQuestions 8-10Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 8-10 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN If there is no information on this8 _____ He is less famous than he should be.9 _____ He was famous as a doctor before he was employed by the Queen.10 _____ He lost faith in the medical theories of his time.Questions 11-13Choose THREE letters A-F.Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.Which THREE of the following are parts of Gilbert’s discovery?A _____ Metal can be transformed into another.B _____ Garlic can remove magnetism.C _____ Metals can be magnetized.D _____ Stars are at different distances from the earth.E _____ The earth wobbles on its axis.F _____ There are two charges of electricity.SECTION 2: QUESTIONS 14-26READING PASSAGE 2You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.The 2003 Heat waveIt was the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself unmistakably felt. We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clear.The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as in Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way. Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78°C above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world's leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records.That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context - but then you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU's director, is prepared to say openly - in a way few scientists have done before - that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are “consistent with predictions” of climate change. For the great block of the map - that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E - the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the temperature norm, or “anomalies”, over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature - the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years - approaching, or even exceeding, 2°C. But there has been nothing remotely like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.“This is quite remarkable,’ Professor Jones told The Independent. “It’s very unusual in a statisticalsense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldn’t get this number. The return period [how often it could be expected to recur] would be something like one in a thousand years. If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we’ve seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human actions.”The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later, the unprecedented hot summer was bound to come, and this year it did.One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 23°C (73.4°F) at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.5°C (77.9°F). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine Valley with a lowest figure of 27.6°C (80.6°F) on 13 August, and similar record-breaking nighttime temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by about 5°C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged 75-94.For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself - defined as the June, July and August period -still comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat. “At the moment, the year is on course to be the third hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002, but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second place/' Professor Jones said. The ten hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European summer of 2003. “The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record," he said.“It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that. It was enormously exceptional."His colleagues at the University of East Anglia's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are now planning a special study of it. “It was a summer that has not been experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat," said the centre's executive director, Professor Mike Hulme.“It will certainly have left its mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods have revolutionised the way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. The 2003 heatwave will have similar repercussions across Europe."Questions 14-19Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes14-19 on your answer sheet writeYES if the statement agrees with the views of the writerNO if the statement contradicts the views of the writerNOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this14 _____ The average summer temperature in 2003 is almost 4 degrees higher than the average temperature of the past.15 _____ Global warming is caused by human activities.16 _____ Jones believes the temperature variation is within the normal range.17 _____ The temperature is measured twice a day in major cities.18 _____ There were milder winters rather than hotter summers.19 _____ Governments are building new high-altitude ski resorts.Questions 20-21Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR NUMBERS from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.What are the other two hottest years in Britain besides 2003?20 _____What has also influenced government policies like the hot summer in 2003?21 _____Questions 22-25Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 22-25 on your answer sheet.The other two hottest years around the globe were 22 _____The ten hottest years on record all come after the year 23 _____This temperature data has been gathered since 24 _____Thousands of people died in the country of 25_____Question 26Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.Write your answer in box 26 on your answer sheet.26 _____Which one of the following can be best used as the title of this passage?A Global WarmingB What Caused Global WarmingC The Effects of Global WarmingD That Hot Year in EuropeSECTION 3: QUESTIONS 27-40READING PASSAGE 3You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.Amateur NaturalistsFrom the results of an annual Alaskan betting contest to sightings of migratory birds, ecologists are using a wealth of unusual data to predict the impact of climate change.ATim Sparks slides a small leather-bound notebook out of an envelope. The book's yellowing pages contain bee-keeping notes made between 1941 and 1969 by the late Walter Coates of Kilworth, Leicestershire. He adds it to his growing pile of local journals, birdwatchers' lists and gardening diaries. "We're uncovering about one major new record each month," he says, "I still get surprised." Around two centuries before Coates, Robert Marsham, a landowner from Norfolk in the east of England, began recording the life cycles of plants and animals on his estate - when the first wood anemones flowered, the dates on which the oaks burst into leaf and the rooks began nesting. Successive Marshams continued compiling these notes for 211 years.BToday, such records are being put to uses that their authors could not possibly have expected. These data sets, and others like them, are proving invaluable to ecologists interested in the timing of biological events, or phenology. By combining the records with climate data, researchers can reveal how, for example, changes in temperature affect the arrival of spring, allowing ecologists to make improved predictions about the impact of climate change. A small band of researchers is combing through hundreds of years of records taken by thousands of amateur naturalists. And more systematic projects have also started up, producing an overwhelming response. "The amount of interest is almost frightening," says Sparks, a climate researcher at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire.CSparks first became aware of the army of "closet phenologists”, as he describes them, when a retiring colleague gave him the Marsham records. He now spends much of his time followingleads from one historical data set to another. As news of his quest spreads, people tip him off to other historical records, and more amateur phenologists come out of their closets. The British devotion to recording and collecting makes his job easier - one man from Kent sent him 30 years' worth of kitchen calendars, on which he had noted the date that his neighbour's magnolia tree flowered.DOther researchers have unearthed data from equally odd sources. Rafe Sagarin, an ecologist at Stanford University in California, recently studied records of a betting contest in which participants attempt to guess the exact time at which a specially erected wooden tripod will fall through the surface of a thawing river. The competition has taken place annually on the Tenana River in Alaska since 1917, and analysis of the results showed that the thaw now arrives five days earlier than it did when the contest began.EOverall, such records have helped to show that, compared with 20 years ago, a raft of natural events now occur earlier across much of the northern hemisphere, from the opening of leaves to the return of birds from migration and the emergence of butterflies from hibernation. The data can also hint at how nature will change in the future. Together with models of climate change, amateurs' records could help guide conservation. Terry Root, an ecologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has collected birdwatchers' counts of wildfowl taken between 1955 and 1996 on seasonal ponds in the American Midwest and combined them with climate data and models of future warming. Her analysis shows that the increased droughts that the models predict could halve the breeding populations at the ponds. "The number of waterfowl in North America will most probably drop significantly with global warming," she says.FBut not all professionals are happy to use amateur data. "A lot of scientists won't touch them, they say they're too full of problems," says Root. Because different observers can have different ideas of what constitutes, for example, an open snowdrop. "The biggest concern with ad hoc observations is how carefully and systematically they were taken," says Mark Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who studies the interactions between plants and climate. "We need to know pretty precisely what a person's been observing - if they just say 'I noted when the leaves came out', it might not be that useful." Measuring the onset of autumn can be particularly problematic because deciding when leaves change colour is a more subjectiveprocess than noting when they appear.GOverall, most phenologists are positive about the contribution that amateurs can make. "They get at the raw power of science: careful observation of the natural world," says Sagarin. But the professionals also acknowledge the need for careful quality control. Root, for example, tries to gauge the quality of an amateur archive by interviewing its collector. "You always have to worry -things as trivial as vacations can affect measurement. I disregard a lot of records because they're not rigorous enough," she says. Others suggest that the right statistics can iron out some of theproblems with amateur data. Together with colleagues at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, environmental scientist Arnold van Vliet is developing statistical techniques to account for the uncertainty in amateur phenological data. With the enthusiasm of amateur phenologists evident from past records, professional researchers are now trying to create standardised recording schemes for future efforts. They hope that well-designed studies will generate a volume of observations large enough to drown out the idiosyncrasies of individual recorders. The data are cheap to collect, and can provide breadth in space, time and range of species. "It's very difficult to collect data on a large geographical scale without enlisting an army of observers," says Root.HPhenology also helps to drive home messages about climate change. "Because the public understand these records, they accept them," says Sparks.It can also illustrate potentially unpleasant consequences, he adds, such as the finding that more rat infestations are reported to local councils in warmer years. And getting people involved is great for public relations. "People are thrilled to think that the data they've been collecting as a hobby can be used for something scientific - it empowers them," says Root.Questions 27-33Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs A-H.Which paragraph contains the following information?Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.27 _____ The definition of phenology28 _____ How Sparks first became aware of amateur records29 _____ How people reacted to their involvement in data collection30 _____ The necessity to encourage amateur data collection31 _____ A description of using amateur records to make predictions32 _____ Records of a competition providing clues to climate change33 _____ A description of a very old record compiled by generations of amateur naturalistsQuestions 34-36Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 34-36 on your answer sheet.Walter Coates’s records largely contain the information of 34 _____Robert Marsham is famous for recording the 35_____ of animals and plants on his land.According to some phenologists, global warming may cause the number of waterfowl in NorthAmerica to drop significantly due to increased 36 _____ Questions 37-40Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.37 _____Why do a lot of scientists discredit the data collected by amateurs?A Scientific methods were not used in data collection.B Amateur observers are not careful in recording their data.C Amateur data is not reliable.D Amateur data is produced by wrong candidates.38 _____Mark Schwartz used the example of leaves to illustrate thatA amateur records can’t be used.B amateur records are always unsystematic.C the colour change of leaves is hard to observe.D valuable information is often precise.39 _____How do the scientists suggest amateur data should be used?A Using improved methodsB Being more careful in observationC Using raw materialsD Applying statistical techniques in data collection40 _____What’s the implication of phenology for ordinary people?A It empowers the public.B It promotes public relations.C It warns people of animal infestation.D It raises awareness about climate change in the public.参考答案2. i3. vi4. x5. ix6. iv7. ii8. TRUE9. TRUE10. NOT GIVEN多选11-13C Metals can be magnetized.D Stars are at different distances from the earth.E The earth wobbles on its axis.14. YES15. YES16. No17. NOT GIVEN18. YES19. NOT GIVEN20. 1976 and 199521. 2000 floods22. 1998 and 200223. 199024. 185625. France26. D27. B28. C29. H31. E32. D33. A34. bee-keeping notes35. life cycle(s)36. drought(s)37. C38. D39. A40. D。
雅思(阅读)历年真题试卷汇编15(题后含答案及解析)
雅思(阅读)历年真题试卷汇编15(题后含答案及解析) 题型有:1.REVIEW OF RESEARCH ON THE EFFECTS OF FOOD PROMOTION TO CHILDRENThis review was commissioned by the Food Standards Agency to examine the current research evidence on: the extent and nature of food promotion to children the effect, if any, that this promotion has on their food knowledge, preferences and behaviour.A Children’s food promotion is dominated by television advertising, and the great majority of this promotes the so-called ‘Big Four’of pre-sugared breakfast cereals, soft-drinks, confectionary and savoury snacks. In the last ten years advertising for fast food outlets has rapidly increased. There is some evidence that the dominance of television has recently begun to wane. The importance of strong, global branding reinforces a need for multi-faceted communications combining television with merchandising, tie-ins’and point of sale activity. The advertised diet contrasts sharply with that recommended by public health advisors, and themes of fun and fantasy or taste, rather than health and nutrition, are used to promote it to children. Meanwhile, the recommended diet gets little promotional support.B There is plenty of evidence that children notice and enjoy food promotion. However, establishing whether this actually influences them is a complex problem. The review tackled it by looking at studies that had examined possible effects on what children know about food, their food preferences, their actual food behaviour(both buying and eating), and their health outcomes(eg. obesity or cholesterol levels). The majority of studies examined food advertising, but a few examined other forms of food promotion. In terms of nutritional knowledge, food advertising seems to have little influence on children’s general perceptions of what constitutes a healthy diet, but, in certain contexts, it does have an effect on more specific types of nutritional knowledge. For example, seeing soft drink and cereal adverts reduced primary aged children’s ability to determine correctly whether or not certain products contained real fruit.C The review also found evidence that food promotion influences children’s food preferences and their purchase behaviour. A study of primary school children, for instance, found that exposure to advertising influenced which foods they claimed to like; and another showed that labelling and signage on a vending machine had an effect on what was bought by secondary school pupils. A number of studies have also shown that food advertising can influence what children eat. One, for example, showed that advertising influenced a primary class’s choice of daily snack at playtime.D The next step, of trying to establish whether or not a link exists between food promotion and diet or obesity, is extremely difficult as it requires research to be done in real world settings. A number of studies have attempted this by using amount of television viewing as a proxy for exposure to television advertising. They have established a clear link between television viewing and diet, obesity, and cholesterol levels. It is impossible to say, however, whether this effect is caused by theadvertising, the sedentary nature of television viewing or snacking that might take place whilst viewing. One study resolved this problem by taking a detailed diary of children’s viewing habits. This showed that the more food adverts they saw, the more snacks and calories they consumed.E Thus the literature does suggest food promotion is influencing children’s diet in a number of ways. This does not amount to proof; as noted above with this kind of research, incontrovertible proof simply isn’t attainable. Nor do all studies point to this conclusion; several have not found an effect. In addition, very few studies have attempted to measure how strong these effects are relative to other factors influencing children’s food choices. Nonetheless, many studies have found clear effects and they have used sophisticated methodologies that make it possible to determine that i)these effects are not just due to chance; ii)they are independent of other factors that may influence diet, such as parents’ eating habits or attitudes; and iii)they occur at a brand and category level.F Furthermore, two factors suggest that these findings actually downplay the effect that food promotion has on children. First, the literature focuses principally on television advertising; the cumulative effect of this combined with other forms of promotion and marketing is likely to be significantly greater. Second, the studies have looked at direct effects on individual children, and understate indirect influences. For example, promotion for fast food outlets may not only influence the child, but also encourage parents to take them for meals and reinforce the idea that this is a normal and desirable behaviour.G This does not amount to proof of an effect, but in our view does provide sufficient evidence to conclude that an effect exists. The debate should now shift to what action is needed, and specifically to how the power of commercial marketing can be used to bring about improvements in young people’s eating.You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 on the following pages.Questions 1-7Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G.Choose the most suitable heading for paragraphs A-G from the list of headings below.Write the appropriate number, i-x, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.List of Headingsi General points of agreements and disagreements of researchersii How much children really know about foodiii Need to take actioniv Advertising effects of the “Big Four”v Connection of advertising and children’s weight problemsvi Evidence that advertising affects what children buy to eatvii How parents influence children’s eating habitsviii Advertising’s focus on unhealthy optionsix Children often buy what they wantx Underestimating the effects advertising has on children1.Paragraph A正确答案:viii解析:作为开头段落,该段落前半部分先介绍了常见的面向儿童的广告内容,例如“Big Four”,而且介绍了食品促销的现状。
剑桥雅思真题6-阅读Test1(附答案)
剑桥雅思真题6-阅读Test 1(附答案)Reading Passage 1You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.Australia’s Sporting SuccessA They play hard, they play often, and they play to win. Australian sports teams win more than their fair share of titles, demolishing rivals with seeming ease. How do they do it? A big part of the secret is an extensive and expensive network of sporting academies underpinned by science and medicine. At the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), hundreds of youngsters and pros live and train under the eyes of coaches. Another body, the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) finances programs of excellence in a total of 96 sports for thousands of sportsmen and women. Both provide intensive coaching, training facilities and nutritional advice.B Inside the academies, science takes centre stage. The AIS employs more than 100 sports scientists and doctors, and collaborates with scores of others in universities and research centres. AIS scientists work across a number of sports, applying skills teamed in one - such as building muscle strength in golfers -to others, such as swimming and squash. They are backed up by technicians who design instruments to collect data from athletes. They all focus on one aim: winning. We can't waste our time looking at ethereal scientific questions that don't help the coach work with an athlete and improve performance,' says Peter Fricker, chief of science at AIS.C A lot of their work comes down to measurement -everything from the exact angle of a swimmer’s dive to the second-by-second power output of a cyclist. This data is used to wring improvements out of athletes. The focus is on individuals, tweaking performances to squeeze an extra hundredth of a second here, an extra millimetre there. No gain is too slight to bother with. It’s the tiny, gradual improvements that add up to world-beating results. To demonstrate how the system works, Bruce Mason at AIS shows off the prototype of a 3D analysis tool for studying swimmers. A wire-frame model of a champion swimmer slices through the water, her arms moving in slow motion. Looking side-on, Mason measures the distance between strokes. From above, he analyses how her spine swivels. When fully developed, this system will enable him to build a biomechanical profile for coaches to use to help budding swimmers. Mason's contribution to sport also includes the development of the SWAN (Swimming Analysis) system now used in Australian national competitions. It collects images from digital cameras running at 50 frames a second and breaks down each part of a swimmer's performance into factors that can be analysed individually - stroke length, stroke frequency, average duration of each stroke, velocity, start, lap and finish times, and so on. At the end of each race, SW AN spits out data on each swimmer.D‘Take a look,' says Mason, pulling out a sheet of data. He points out the data on the swimmers in second and third place, which shows that the one who finished third actually swam faster. So why did he finish 35 hundredths of a second down? ‘His turn times were 44 hundredths of a second behind the other guy,' says Mason. ‘If he can improve on his turns, he can do much better’. This is the kind of accuracy that AIS scientists' research is bringing to a range of sports. With the Cooperative Research Centre for Micro Technology in Melbourne, they are developing unobtrusive sensors that will be embedded in an athlete's clothes or running shoes to monitor heartrate, sweating, heat production or any other factor that might have an impact on an athlete's ability to run. There's more to it than simply measuring performance. Fricker gives the example of athletes who may be down with coughs and colds 11 or 12 times a year. After years of experimentation, AIS and the University of Newcastle in New South Wales developed a test that measures how much of the immune-system protein immunoglobulin A is present in athletes' saliva. If IgA levels suddenly fall below a certain level, training is eased or dropped altogether. Soon, IgA levels start rising again, and the danger passes. Since the tests were introduced, AIS athletes in all sports have been remarkably successful at staying healthy.E Using data is a complex business. Well before a championship, sports scientists and coaches start to prepare the athlete by developing a ‘competition model', based on what they expect will be the winning times. ‘You design the model to make that time,' says Mason. ‘A start of this much, each free-swimming period has to be this fast, with a certain stroke frequency and stroke length, with turns done in these times.' All the training is then geared towards making the athlete hit those targets, both overall and for each segment of the race. Techniques like these have transformed Australia into arguably the world's most successful sporting nation.F Of course, there's nothing to stop other countries copying-and many have tried. Some years ago, the AIS unveiled coolant-lined jackets for endurance athletes. At the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, these sliced as much as two per cent off cyclists' and rowers' times. Now everyone uses them. The same has happened to the ‘altitude tent', developed by AIS to replicate the effect of altitude training at sea level. But Australia's success story is about more than easily copied technological fixes, and up to now no nation has replicated its all-encompassing system. Question 1-7Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A-F.Which paragraph contains the following information?Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.NB You may use any letter more than once.1. a reference to the exchange of expertise between different sports2. an explanation of how visual imaging is employed in investigations3. a reason for narrowing the scope of research activity4. how some AIS ideas have been reproduced5. how obstacles to optimum achievement can be investigated6. an overview of the funded support of athletes7. how performance requirements are calculated before an eventQuestion 8-11Classify the following techniques according to whether the writer states theyA. are currently exclusively used by AustraliansB. will be used in the future by AustraliansC. are currently used by both Australians and their rivalsWrite the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 8-11 on your answer sheet.8. cameras9. sensors10. protein tests11. altitude tentsQuestion 12-13Answer the questions below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 12 and 13 on your answer sheet.12 What is produced to help an athlete plan their performance in an event?13 By how much did some cyclists' performance improve at the 1996 Olympic Games?Reading Passage 2You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.Delivering the GoodsThe vast expansion in international trade owes much to a revolution in the business ofmoving freightA International trade is growing at a startling pace. While the global economy has been expanding at a bit over 3% a year, the volume of trade has been rising at a compound annual rate of about twice that. Foreign products, from meat to machinery, play a more important role in almost every economy in the world, and foreign markets now tempt businesses that never much worried about sales beyond their nation's borders.B What lies behind this explosion in international commerce? The general worldwide decline in trade barriers, such as customs duties and import quotas, is surely one explanation. The economic opening of countries that have traditionally been minor players is another. But one force behind the import-export boom has passed all but unnoticed: the rapidly falling cost of getting goods to market. Theoretically, in the world of trade, shipping costs do not matter. Goods, once they have been made, are assumed to move instantly and at no cost from place to place. The real world, however, is full of frictions. Cheap labour may make Chinese clothing competitive in America, but if delays in shipment tie up working capital and cause winter coats to arrive in spring, trade may lose its advantages.C At the turn of the 20th century, agriculture and manufacturing were the two most important sectors almost everywhere, accounting for about 70% of total output in Germany, Italy and France, and 40-50% in America, Britain and Japan. International commerce was therefore dominated by raw materials, such as wheat, wood and iron ore, or processed commodities, such as meat and steel. But these sorts of products are heavy and bulky and the cost of transporting them relatively high.D Countries still trade disproportionately with their geographic neighbours. Over time, however, world output has shifted into goods whose worth is unrelated to their size and weight. Today, it is finished manufactured products that dominate the flow of trade, and, thanks to technological advances such as lightweight components, manufactured goods themselves have tended to become lighter and less bulky. As a result, less transportation is required for every dollar's worth of imports or exports.E To see how this influences trade, consider the business of making disk drives for computers. Most of the world's disk-drive manufacturing is concentrated in South-east Asia. This is possible only because disk drives, while valuable, are small and light and so cost little to ship. Computer manufacturers in Japan or Texas will not face hugely bigger freight bills if they import drives from Singapore rather than purchasing them on the domestic market. Distance therefore poses no obstacle to the globalisation of the disk-drive industry.F This is even more true of the fast-growing information industries. Films and compact discs cost little to transport, even by aeroplane. Computer software can be 'exported' without ever loading it onto a ship, simply by transmitting it over telephone lines from one country to another, so freight rates and cargo-handling schedules become insignificant factors in deciding where to make the product. Businesses can locate based on other considerations, such as the availability of labour, while worrying less about the cost of delivering their output.G In many countries deregulation has helped to drive the process along. But, behind the scenes, a series of technological innovations known broadly as containerization and inter-modal transportation has led to swift productivity improvements in cargo-handling. Forty years ago, the process of exporting or importing involved a great many stages of handling, which risked portions of the shipment being damaged or stolen along the way. The invention of the container crane made it possible to load and unload containers without capsizing the ship and the adoption of standard container sizes allowed almost any box to be transported on any ship. By 1967, dual-purpose ships, carrying loose cargo in the hold* and containers on the deck, were giving way to all-container vessels that moved thousands of boxes at a time.*hold: ship's storage area below deckH The shipping container transformed ocean shipping into a highly efficient, intensely competitive business. But getting the cargo to and from the dock was a different story. National governments, by and large, kept a much firmer hand on truck and railroad tariffs than on charges for ocean freight. This started changing, however, in the mid-1970s, when America began to deregulate its transportation industry. First airlines, then road hauliers and railways, were freed from restrictions on what they could carry, where they could haul it and what price they could charge. Big productivity gains resulted. Between 1985 and 1996, for example, America's freight railways dramatically reduced their employment, trackage, and their fleets of locomotives - while increasing the amount of cargo they hauled. Europe's railways have also shown marked, albeit smaller, productivity improvements.I America the period of huge productivity gains in transportation may be almost over, but in most countries the process still has far to go. State ownership of railways and airlines, regulation of freight rates and toleration of anti-competitive practices, such as cargo-handling monopolies, all keep the cost of shipping unnecessarily high and deter international trade. Bringing these barriers down would help the world's economies grow even closer.Question 14-17Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-I.Which paragraph contains the following information?Write the correct letter, A-I in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.14. a suggestion for improving trade in the future15. the effects of the introduction of electronic delivery16. the similar cost involved in transporting a product from abroad or from a local supplier17. the weakening relationship between the value of goods and the cost of their delivery Question 18-22Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?In boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage18. International trade is increasing at a greater rate than the world economy.19. Cheap labour guarantees effective trade conditions.20. Japan imports more meat and steel than France.21. Most countries continue to prefer to trade with nearby nations.22. Small computer components are manufactured in Germany.Question 23-26Complete the summary using the list of words, A-K, below.Write the correct letter, A-K, in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.The Transport RevolutionModern cargo-handling methods have had a significant effect on 23 ………… as the business of moving freight around the world becomes increasingly streamlined. Manufacturers of computers, for instance, are able to import 24 ………… from overseas, rather than having to rely on a local supplier. The introduction of 25 ………… has meant that bulk cargo can be safely and efficiently moved over long distances. While international shipping is now efficient, there is still a need for governments to reduce 26 ………… in order to free up the domestic cargo sector.You should spend about 20 minutes on QUESTIONS 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.Climate Change and the InuitThe threat posed by climate change in the Arctic and the problems faced by Canada’s InuitpeopleA Unusual incidents are being reported across the Arctic. Inuit families going off on snowmobiles to prepare their summer hunting camps have found themselves cut off from home by a sea of mud, following early thaws. There are reports of igloos losing their insulating properties as tile snow drips and refreezes, of lakes draining into the sea as permafrost melts, and sea ice breaking up earlier than usual, carrying seals beyond the reach of hunters. Climate change may still be a rather abstract idea to most of us, but in the Arctic it is already having dramatic effects — if summertime ice continues to shrink at its present rate, the Arctic Ocean could soon become virtually ice-free in summer. The knock-on effects are likely to include more warming, cloudierskies, increased precipitation and higher sea levels. Scientists are increasingly keen to find out what's going on because they consider the Arctic the 'canary in the mine' for global warming — a warning of what's in store for the rest of the world.B For the Inuit the problem is urgent. They live in precarious balance with one of the toughest environments on earth. Climate change, whatever its causes, is a direct threat to their way of life. Nobody knows the Arctic as well as the locals, which is why they are not content simply to stand back and let outside experts tell them what's happening. In Canada, where the Inuit people are jealously guarding their hard-won autonomy in the country's newest territory, Nunavut, they believe their best hope of survival in this changing environment lies in combining their ancestral knowledge with the best of modern science. This is a challenge in itself.C The Canadian Arctic is a vast, treeless polar desert that's covered with snow for most of the year. Venture into this terrain and you get some idea of the hardships facing anyone who calls this home. Farming is out of the question and nature offers meagre pickings. Humans first settled in the Arctic a mere 4,500 years ago, surviving by exploiting sea mammals and fish. The environment tested them to the limits: sometimes the colonists were successful, sometimes they failed and vanished. But around a thousand years ago, one group emerged that was uniquely well adapted to cope with the Arctic environment. These Thule people moved in from Alaska, bringing kayaks, sleds, dogs, pottery and iron tools. They are the ancestors of today's Inuit people.D Life for the descendants of the Thule people is still harsh. Nunavut is 1.9 million square kilometres of rock and ice, and a handful of islands around the North Pole. It's currently home to 2,500 people, all but a handful of them indigenous Inuit. Over the past 40 years, most have abandoned their nomadic ways and settled in the territory's 28 isolated communities, but they still rely heavily on nature to provide food and clothing. Provisions available in local shops have to be flown into Nunavut on one of the most costly air networks in the world, or brought by supply ship during the few ice-free weeks of summer. It would cost a family around £7,000 a year to replace meat they obtained themselves through hunting with imported meat. Economic opportunities are scarce, and for many people state benefits are their only income.E While the Inuit may not actually starve if hunting and trapping are curtailed by climate change, there has certainly been an impact on people's health. Obesity, heart disease and diabetes are beginning to appear in a people for whom these have never before been problems. There has been a crisis of identity as the traditional skills of hunting, trapping and preparing skins have begun to disappear. In Nunavut's 'igloo and email' society, where adults who were born in igloos have children who may never have been out on the land, there's a high incidence of depression.F With so much at stake, the Inuit are determined to play a key role in teasing out the mysteries of climate change in the Arctic. Having survived there for centuries, they believe their wealth of traditional knowledge is vital to the task. And Western scientists are starting to draw on this wisdom, increasingly referred to as 'Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit', or IQ. 'In the early days scientists ignored us when they came up here to study, anything. They just figured these people don't know very much so we won't ask them,' says John Amagoalik, an Inuit leader and politician. 'But in recent years IQ has had much more credibility and weight.' In fact it is now a requirement for anyone hoping to get permission to do research that they consult the communities, who are helping to set the research agenda to reflect their most important concerns. They can turn down applications from scientists they believe will work against their interests, or research projects that will impinge too much on their daily lives and traditional activities.G Some scientists doubt the value of traditional knowledge because the occupation of the Arctic doesn't go back far enough. Others, however, point out that the first weather stations in the far north date back just 50 years. There are still huge gaps in our environmental knowledge, and despite the scientific onslaught, many predictions are no more than best guesses. IQ could help to bridge the gap and resolve the tremendous uncertainty about how much of what we're seeing is natural capriciousness and how much is the consequence of human activity.Question 27-32Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G.Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.Write the correct number, i-ix, into boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.Example Paragraph A Answer viii27 Paragraph B28 Paragraph C29 Paragraph D30 Paragraph E31 Paragraph F32 Paragraph GQuestion 33-40Complete the summary of paragraphs C and D belowChoose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from paragraphs C and D for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 33-40 on your answer sheet.If you visit the Canadian Arctic, you immediately appreciate the problems faced by people for whom this is home. It would clearly be impossible for the people to engage in 33 ………… as a means of supporting themselves. For thousands of years they have had to rely on catching 34 ………… and 35 ………… as a means of sustenance. The harsh surroundings saw many who tried to settle there pushed to their limits, although some were successful. The 36 ………… people were an example of the latter and for them the environment did not prove unmanageable. For the present inhabitants, life continues to be a struggle. The territory of Nunavut consists oflittle more than ice, rock and a few 37 …………. In recent years, many of them have been obliged to give up their 38 ………… lifestyle, but they continue to depend mainly on 39 ………… for their food and clothes. 40 ………… produce is particularly expensive.参考答案1 B2 C3 B4 F5 D6 A7 E8 A9 B10 A11 C12 (a) competition model13 (by) 2 per cent/%14 I15 F16 E17 D18 TRUE19 FALSE20 NOT GIVEN21 TRUE22 NOT GIVEN23 G24 B25 C26 A27 i28 vi29 iii30 vii31 iv32 ii33 farming34 & 35 (IN EITHER ORDER): sea mammals; fish36 Thule37 islands38 nomadic39 nature40 Imported。
雅思(阅读)历年真题试卷汇编13(题后含答案及解析)
雅思(阅读)历年真题试卷汇编13(题后含答案及解析) 题型有:1.You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.Man or Machine?MIT’s humanoid robots showcase both human creativity and contemporary pessimism.Humanoid robots were once the stuff of political and science fiction. Today, scientists working in Japan and the USA have been turning fiction into a physical reality.A During July 2003, the Museum of Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts exhibited what Honda calls ‘the world’s most advanced humanoid robot’, ASIMO(the Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility). Honda’s brainchild is on tour in North America and delighting audiences wherever it goes. After 17 years in the making, ASIMO stands at four feet tall, weighs around 115 pounds and looks like a child in an astronaut’s suit. Though it is difficult to see ASIMO’s face at a distance, on closer inspection it has a smile and two large ‘eyes’that conceal cameras. The robot cannot work autonomously —its actions are ‘remote controlled’ by scientists through the computer in its backpack. Yet watching ASMIO perform at a show in Massachusetts it seemed uncannily human. The audience cheered as ASIMO walked forwards and backwards, side to side and up and downstairs. It can even dance to the Hawaiian Hula.B While the Japanese have made huge strides in solving some of the engineering problems of human kinetics and bipedal movements, for the past 10 years scientists at MIT’s former Artificial Intelligence(Al)lab(recently renamed the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, CSAIL)have been making robots that can behave like humans and interact with humans. One of MIT’s robots, Kismet, is an anthropomorphic head and has two eyes(complete with eyelids), ears, a mouth, and eyebrows. It has several facial expressions, including happy, sad, frightened and disgusted. Human interlocutors are able to read some of the robot’s facial expressions, and often change their behaviour towards the machine as a result - for example, playing with it when it appears ‘sad’. Kismet is now in MIT’s museum, but the ideas developed here continue to be explored in new robots.C Cog(short for Cognition)is another pioneering project from MIT’s former Al lab. Cog has a head, eyes, two arms, hands and a torso —and its proportions were originally measured from the body of a researcher in the lab. The work on Cog has been used to test theories of embodiment and developmental robotics, particularly getting a robot to develop intelligence by responding to its environment via sensors, and to learn through these types of interactions. This approach to Al was thought up and developed by a team of students and researchers led by the head of MIT’s former Al lab, Rodney Brooks(now head of CSAIL), and represented a completely new development.D This work at MIT is getting furthest down the road to creating human-like and interactive robots. Some scientists argue that ASIMO is a great engineering feat but not an intelligent machine —because it is unable to interact autonomously with unpredictabilities in its environment inmeaningful ways, and learn from experience. Robots like Cog and Kismet and new robots at MIT’s CSAIL and media lab, however, are beginning to do this.E These are exciting developments. Creating a machine that can walk, make gestures and learn from its environment is an amazing achievement. And watch this space: these achievements are likely rapidly to be improved upon. Humanoid robots could have a plethora of uses in society, helping to free people from everyday tasks. In Japan, for example, there is an aim to create robots that can do the tasks similar to an average human, and also act in more sophisticated situations as firefighters, astronauts or medical assistants to the elderly in the workplace and in homes —partly in order to counterbalance the effects of an ageing population.F So in addition to these potentially creative plans there lies a certain dehumanisation. The idea that companions can be replaced with machines, for example, suggests a mechanical and degraded notion of human relationships. On one hand, these developments express human creativity —our ability to invent, experiment, and to extend our control over the world. On the other hand, the aim to create a robot like a human being is spurred on by dehumanised ideas —by the sense that human companionship can be substituted by machines; that humans lose their humanity when they interact with technology; or that we are little more than surface and ritual behaviours, that can be simulated with metal and electrical circuits.G The tension between the dehumanised and creative aspects of robots has long been explored in culture. In Karel Capek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, a 1921 play in which the term ‘robot’ was first coined, although Capek’s robots had human-like appearance and behaviour, the dramatist never thought these robots were human. For Capek, being human was about much more than appearing to be human. In part, it was about challenging a dehumanising system, and struggling to become recognised and given the dignity of more than a machine. A similar spirit would guide us well through twenty-first century experiments in robotics.Questions 1-7Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.1.The different uses of robots in society正确答案:E解析:利用反向思维词“different uses”可以推断原文对应信息应该提及具体的机器人的使用,例如替代人类工作、照顾老年人、机械战士等等。
雅思阅读考试真题-高速摄影High Speed Photography
High Speed Photography高速摄影A Photography gained the interest of many scientists and artists from its inception. Scientists have used photography to record and study movements. such as Eadweard Muybridge's study of human and animal locomotion in 1887. Artists are equally interested by these aspects but also try to explore avenues other than photo-mechanical representation of reality,such as the pictorialist movement. Military, police, and security forces use photography for surveillance, recognition and data storage. Photography is used by amateurs to preserve memories, to capture special moments, to tell stories, to send messages, and as a source of entertainment. Various technological improvements and techniques have even allowed for visualising events that are too slow for the human eye.B One of such techniques is called fast motion or professionally known as time-lapse. Time-lapse photography is the perfect technique for capturing events and movements in the natural world that occur over a timescale too slow for human perception lo follow. The life cycle of a mushroom, for example, is incredibly subtle to the human eye. To present its growth in front of audiences, the principle applied is a simple one: a series of photographs are taken and used in sequence lo make a moving-image film since each frame is taken with a lapse at a time interval between each shot, when played back at normal speed, a continuous action is produced and it appears to speed up. Put simply: we are shrinking time. Objects and events that would normally take several minutes, days or even months can he viewed to completion in seconds having been sped up by factors of tens lo millions.C Another commonly used technique is high-speed photography, the science of taking pictures of very fast phenomena. High-speed photography can be considered to be the opposite of time-lapse photography. One of the many applications is found in biology studies to study birds, bats and even spider silk. Imagine a hummingbird hovering almost completely still in the air, feeding on nectar. With every flap, its wings bend, flex and change shape. These subtle movements precisely control the lift its wings generate, making it an excellent hoverer. But a hummingbird flaps its wings up to 80 times every second. The only way to truly capture this motion is with cameras that will, in effect, slow down time. T o do this, a greater length of film is taken at a high sampling frequency or frame rate, which is much faster than it will be projected on screen. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be slowed down proportionately. That is why high-speed cameras have become such as mainstay of biology.D In common usage, high-speed photography can also refer to the use of high-speed cameras I that the photography itself may be taken in a as to appear to freeze the motion, especially to reduce motion blur. It requires a sensor with good sensitivity and either a very good shuttering system or a very fest strobe light. The recent National Geographic footage—captured, last summer during an intensive three-day shoot at the Cincinnati Zoo—is unprecedented in its clarity and detail. "I’ve watched cheetahs run for 30 years, said Cathryn Hilker, founder of the zoo's Cat Ambassador Program.” But I saw things in that super slow-mot ion video that I’ve never seen before. The slow-motion video is entrancing. Every part of the sprinting cat’s anatomy—supple limbs, rippling muscles, hyperflexible spine-works together in a symphony of speed,revealing the fluid grace of the world's fastest land animal.E But things can’t get any more complicated in the case of filming a frog catching its prey. Frogs can snatch up prey in a few thousandths of a second-striking out with elastic tongues. Biologists would love to see how a frog's tongue roll out, adhere to prey, and roll back into the frog's mouth. But this all happened too fest, 50 times faster than an eye blink. So naturally people thought of using high-speed camera to capture this fantastic movement in slow motion. Yet one problem still remains--viewers would be bored if they watch the frog swim in slow motion for too long. So how to skip this? The solution is a simple one—adjust the playback speed, which is also called by some the film speed adjustment. The film will originally be shot at a high frame (often 300 frames per second, because it can be converted to much lower frame rates without major issues), but at later editing stage this high frame rate will only be preserved for the prey catching part, while the swimming part will be converted to the normal speed at 24 frames speed second. Voila, the scientists can now sit back and enjoy watching without having to go through the pain of waiting.F Sometimes taking a good picture or shooting a good film is not all about technology, but patience, like in the case of bat. Bats are small, dark-colored; they fly fast and are active only at night. To capture bats on film, one must use some type of camera-tripping device. Photographers or film-makers often place camera near the bat cave, on the path on the flying bats. The camera must be hard-wired with a tripping device so that every time a bat breaks the tripping beam the camera fires and it will keep doing so through the night until the camera's a battery runs out. Though highly-advanced tripping device can now allow for unmanned shooting, it still may take several nights to get a truly high quality film.G Is it science? Is it art? Since the technique was first pioneered around two hundred years ago, photography has developed to a state where it is almost unrecognisable. Some people would even say the future of photography will be nothing like how we imagine it. No matter what future it may hold, photography will continue to develop as it has been repeatedly demonstrated in many aspects of our l ife that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”Questions 27-30Look at the following organisms (Questions 27-30) and the list of features below. Match each organism with the correct feature. A-D.Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet27Mushroom28Hummingbird29Frog30BatQuestions 31-35Complete the summary below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 31-35 on your answer sheet.Fast motion (professionally known as time-lapse photography) and slow motion (or high-speed photography) are two commonest techniques of photography. To present before audiences something that occurs naturally slow, photographers take each picture at a 31___________before another picture. When these pictures are finally shown on screen in sequence at a normal motion picture rate, audiences see a32___________ that is faster than what it naturally is. This technique can make audiences feel as if 33___________is shrunk. On the other hand, to demonstrate how fast things move, the movement is exposed on a 34___________ of film, and then projected on screen at normal playback speed. This makes viewers feel time is35___________.Questions 36-40Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G.Which paragraph contains the following information?Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.36a description of photography’s application in various fields37 a reference to why high- speed photography has a significant role in biology38 a traditional wisdom that assures readers of the prospects of photography39 a reference to how film is processed before final release40 a description of filming shooting without human effort。
雅思阅读真题管理学之父
雅思阅读真题管理学之父Father of Modern ManagementPeter Drucker (born in 1909) in known as a the father of modern management. As a prolific writer, business consultant and lecturer, he introduced many management concepts that have been embraced by corporations around the world.A It's been said that Peter Drucker invented the discipline of management. Before he wrote his first book on the topic, he knew of only two companies in the world with management development programs. Ten years after the book's publication, 3,000 companies were teaching the subject. Widely considered as the father of “modern management” he wrote 39 books and countless scholarly and popular articles exploring how humans are organized in all sectors of society-business, government and the nonprofit world. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to a world economic power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning.B Drucker has said that writing is the foundation of everything he does. In 1937, he published his first book, which was written in Europe. The End of Economic Man: A Study of the New Totalitarianism examined the spiritual and social origins of fascism. In 1940, before the United States entered World War II, he wrote The Future of Industrial Man, in which he presented his social vision for the postwar world. In 1943, General Motors asked Drucker to study its management practices. Drucker accepted and spent 18 months researching and writing the 1945 book Concept of the Corporation.C The concepts Drucker introduced in the 1940s and l950s have endured. In 1954, Drucker wrote his first book that taught people how to manage. Titled The Practice of Management, it introduced the concept of “management by objectives”. Management by objectives requiresmanagers to establish goals for their subordinates and devise means of measuring results. Workers are then left alone to perform as they will and measure their performance. Drucker wrote, “It is not possible to be effective unless one first decides what one wants to accomplish.” He went on to explain that every worker must be given the tools “to appraise himself, rather than be appraised and controlled from the outside” Management by objectives has become an accepted business concept and is probably Drucker’s most important contribution. Drucker issued challenges to junior, middle and senior management: “The very term‘middle management’ is becoming meaningless as some will have to learn how to work with people over whom they have no direct line control, to work transnationally, and to create, maintain, and run systems-none of which are traditionally middle manage ment tasks.” It is top management that faces the challenge of setting directions for the enterprise, of managing the fundamentals.D Drucker interviewed executives and workers, visited plants, and attended board meetings. While the book focused on General Motors. Drucker went on to discuss the industrial corporation as a social institution and economic policy in the postwar era. He introduced previously unknown concepts such as cooperation between labor and management, decentralization of management, and viewing workers as resources rather than costs. Drucker saw people as a resource, and considered that they would be more able to satisfy customers if they had more involvement in their jobs and gained some satisfaction from doing them. Drucker claimed that an industrial society allows people to realize their dreams of personal achievement and equal opportunity-the need to manage business by balancing a variety of needs and goals,rather than subordinating an institution to a single value. This concept of management by objectives forms the keynote of his 1954 landmark The Practice of Management. He referred to decentralization as ‘a system of local self-government, in which central management tells division managers what to do, but nothow to do it. The young executives are given the freedom to make decisions-and mistakes-and learn from the experience. Top leaders at General Motors disliked the book and discouraged their executives from reading it. Many other American executives criticized his concept for its challenge to management authority.E Drucker wasn’t immune to criticism. The Wall Street Journal researched Several of his lectures in 1987 and reported that he was sometimes loose with facts. Drucker was off the mark, for example, when he told an audience that English was the official language for all employees at Japan’s Mitsui trading company. And he was known for his prescience. Given the recent involvement of the us government with financial companies, he was probably correct in his forecast when he anticipated, for instance, that the nation's financial center would shift from New York to Washington. Others maintain that one of Drucke r’s core concepts“- management by objectives”-is flawed and has never really been proven to work effectively. Specifically, critics say that the system is difficult to implement, and that companies often wind up overemphasizing control, as opposed to fostering creativity, to meet their goals. Drucker didn’t shy away from controversy, either.F Throughout his career, Drucker expanded his position that management was “a liberal art” and he infused his management advice with interdisciplinary lessons including history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, culture and religion. He also strongly believed that all institutions, including those in the private sector, had a responsibility for the whole society. “The fact is?” Drucker wrote in 1973, “that in modern society there is no other leadership group but managers. If the managers of our major institutions, especially in business, do not take responsibility for the common good, no one else can or will.” In his books, lectures and interviews, the emergence of knowledge workers is only one of the demographic changes Drucker warns businesses to prepare for. Others include a decreasing birth rate in developed countries, a shift in populationfrom rural to urban centers, shifts in distribution of disposable income and global competitiveness. Drucker believes these changes will have a tremendous impact on business. Drucker held a profound skepticism of macroeconomic theory and contended that economists of all schools fail to explain significant aspects of modem economies. Business “gurus” have come and gone during the last 50 years, but Drucker’s message continues to inspire managers. During the 1990s, Drucker wrote about social, political and economic changes of the “postcapitalist” era, which he says are as profound as those of the industrial revolution.Questions 33-36Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?33 Drucker believed the workers should bear the equal position as the employers in a company.34 Middle management tasks will change since companies have become more complex and run business globally.35 Drucker pointed out that economists of schools are not capable of explaining the problems of modem economies at least in a macroeconomics scope.36 Drucker’s conc eptions proposed half a century ago have no effect on modem days.。
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创作编号:GB8878185555334563BT9125XW创作者:凤呜大王*The Spectacular Eruption of Mount St. HelensA The eruption in May 1980 of Mount St. Helens, Washington State, astounded the world withits violence. A gigantic explosion tore much of the volcano's summit to fragments; the energy released was equal to that of 500 of the nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.B The event occurred along the boundary of two of the moving plates that make up the Earth'scrust. They meet at the junction of the North American continent and the Pacific Ocean. One edge of the continental North American plate over-rides the oceanic Juan de Fuca micro-plate,producing the volcanic Cascade range that includes Mounts Baker, Rainier and Hood, and LassenPeak as well as Mount St. Helens.C Until Mount St. Helens began to stir, only Mount Baker and Lassen Peak had shown signs oflife during the 20th century. According to geological evidence found by the United States Geological Survey, there had been two major eruptions of Mount St. Helens in the recent (geologically speaking)past: around 1900 B.C., and about A.D. 1500. Since the arrival of Europeans in the region, it had experienced a single period of spasmodic activity, between 1831and 1857. Then, for more than a century, Mount St. Helens lay dormant.D By 1979, the Geological Survey, alerted by signs of renewed activity, had been monitoring the volcano for 18 months. It warned the local population against being deceived by the mountain's outward calm, and forecast that an eruption would take place before the end of the century. The inhabitants of the area did not have to wait that long. On March 27, 1980,a few clouds of smoke formed above the summit , and slight tremors were felt. On the 28th, larger anddarker clouds,. consisting of gas and ashes,. emerged and climbed as high as 20,000 feet. In Aprila slight lull ensued, but the volcanologists remained pessimistic. The, in early May, theflank of the mountain bulged, and the summit rose by 500 feet.E Steps were taken to evacuate the population. Most- campers, hikers, timbercuttersleft the slopes of the mountain. Eighty-four-year-old Harry Truman, a holiday lodge owner who had livedthere for more than 50 years, refused to be evacuated, in spite of official and public, including anentire class of school children, wrote to him, begging him to leave. He never did.F On May 18, at 8.32 in the morning, Mount St. Helens blew its top. literally. Suddenly, it was1300 feet shorter than it had been before its growth had begun. Over half a cubic mile of rock haddisintegrated . At the same moment, an earthquake with an intensity of 5 on the Richter scale wasrecorded. It triggered an avalanche of snow and ice. mixed with hot rock-the entire north face ofthe mountain had fallen away. A wave of scorching volcanic gas and rock fragments shot horizontally from the volcano's riven flank, at an inescapable 200 miles per hour. As the slidingice and snow melted, it touched off devastating torrents of mud and debris, which destroyed alllife in their path. Pulverised, which destroyed all life in their path. Pulverised rock climbed as adust cloud into the atmosphere. Finally, viscous lava, accompanied by burning clouds of ash andgas, welled out of volcano's new crater, and from lesser vents and cracks in its flanks.G Afterwards, scientists were able to analyse the sequence of events. First, magmamolten rock-at temperatures above 2000o F. had surged into the volcano from the Earth's mantle. The build-up was accompanied by an accumulation of gas, which increased as the mass of magma grew. It was the pressure inside the mountain that made it swell. Next, the rise in gas pressure caused a violent decompression. Which ejected the shattered summit like a cork from a shakensoda bottle. With the summit gone, the molten rock within was released in a jet of gas and fragmented magma, and lava welled from the crater.H The effects of the Mount St. Helens eruption were catastrophic. Almost all the trees of the surrounding forest, mainly Douglas firs. were flattened. and their branches and bark ripped off bythe shock wave of the explosion. Ash and mud spread over nearly 200 square miles of country. Allthe towns and settlements in the area were smothered in an even coating of ash. V olcanic ashup the Columbia River 35 miles away, reducing the debris that accumulated at the foot of the创作编号:GB8878185555334563BT9125XW创作者:凤呜大王*volcano reached a depth. in places, of 200 feet.I The eruption of Mount St. Helens was one of the most closely observed and analysed in history. Because geologists had been expecting the event, they were able to amass vast amounts oftechnical data when it happened. Study of atmospheric particles formed as a result of the explosion showed that droplets of sulphuric acid, acting as a screen between the Sun and the Earth's surface, caused a distinct drop in temperature. There is no doubt that the activity of MountSt. Helens and other volcanoes since 1980 has influenced our climate . Even so, it has been calculated that the quantity of dust ejected by Mount St. Helens - a quarter of a cubic mile- wasnegligible in comparison with that thrown out by earlier eruptions, such as that of Mount Katmaiin Alaska in 1912 (three cubic miles). The volcano is still active. Lava domes have formed insidethe new crater, and have periodically burst. The threat of Mount St Helens lives on..Questions 1 and 2Answer questions 1 and 2 by writing the appropriate letter A-I inboxes 1 and 2 on your answersheet.Example AnswerWhich paragraph compares the eruption to the energy Areleased by nuclear bomb?1. Which paragraph describes the evacuation of the mountain?2. Which paragraph describes the moment of the explosion of Mount St. Helens? Questions 3 and 43. What are the dates of the TWO major eruptions of Mount St. Helens before 1980? Write TWO dates in box 3 on your answer sheet.4 How do scientists know that the volcano exploded around the two dates above?Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS , write your answer in box 4 on your answer sheetQuestions 5-8Complete the summary of events below leading up to the eruption of Mount St. Helens. ChooseNO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.W rite your answers in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.In 1979 the Geological Survey warned ... (5) ... to expect a violent eruption before the end of thecentury. The forecast was soon proved accurate. At the end of March there were tremors and clouds formed above the mountain. This was followed by a lull, but in early May the top of themountain rose by ... (6)... . People were ...(7) ... from around the mountain. Finally, on May 18that ...(8) ..., Mount St. Helens exploded.Question 9 and 10Complete the table below giving evidence for the power of the Mount St. Helens eruption. Write your answers in boxes 9 and 10 on your answer sheet.Item Equivalent toExampleThe energy released by the explosion ofMount St. HelensAnswer500 nuclear bombsThe area of land covered in mud or ash ...(9)...The quantity of dust ejected ...(10)...Question 11Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 11 one your answer sheet.11. According to the text the eruption of Mount St. Helens and other volcanoes has influenced ourclimate by ...A increasing the amount of rainfall.B heating the atmosphere.C cooling the air temperature.D causing atmospheric storms.READING PASSAGE 2Questions 12-16Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs A-G.Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-E and G from the list of heading below. Write the appropriate numbers (i-x) in boxes 12-16 on your answer sheet.NB There are more headings than paragraphs so you will not use all of them.You may use any of the headings more than once.List of Headings(i) The effect of changing demographics on organisations(ii) Future changes in the European workforce(iii) The unstructured interview and its validity(iv) The person-skills match approach to selection创作编号:GB8878185555334563BT9125XW创作者:凤呜大王*(v) The implications of a poor person-environment fit(vi) Some poor selection decisions(vii) The validity of selection procedures(viii) The person-environment fit(ix) Past and future demographic changes in Europe(x) Adequate and inadequate explanations of organisational failureExample Paragraph A Answer (x)12. Paragraph B13. Paragraph C14. Paragraph D15. Paragraph E16. Paragraph GPEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS: THE SELECTION ISSUEA In 1991, according to the Department of Trade and Industry, a record 48,000 British companies went out of business. When businesses fail, the post-mortem analysis is traditionallyundertaken by accountants and market strategists. Unarguably organisations do fail because ofundercapitalisation, poor financial management, adverse market conditions etc. Yet, conversely,organisations with sound financial backing, good product ideas and market acumen often underperform and fail to meet shareholders' expectations. The complexity, degree and sustainmentof organisational performance requires an explanation which goes beyond the balance sheet andthe "paper conversion" of financial inputs into profit making outputs. A more complete explanation of "what went wrong" necessarily must consider the essence of what an organisationactually is and that one of the financial inputs, the most important and often the most expensive, ispeople.B An organisation is only as good as the people it employs. Selecting the right person for the job involves more than identifying the essential or desirable range of skills, educational and professional qualifications necessary to perform the job and then recruiting the candidate who ismost likely to possess these skills or at least is perceived to have the ability and predisposition toacquire them. This is a purely person/skills match approach to selection.C Work invariably takes place in the presence and/or under the direction of others, in a particular organisational setting. The individual has to "fit" in with the work environment, withother employees, with the organisational climate, style or work, organisation and culture of theorganisation. Different organisations have different cultures (Cartwright & Cooper, 1991; 1992).Working as an engineer at British Aerospace will not necessarily be a similar experience to working in the same capacity at GEC or Plessey.D Poor selection decisions are expensive. For example, the costs of training a policeman are about £ 20,000 (approx. US$ 30,000). The costs of employing an unsuitable technician on an oilrig or in a nuclear plant could, in an emergency, result in millions of pounds of damage or loss oflife. The disharmony of a poor person-environment fit (PE-fit) is likely to result in low job satisfaction, lack of organisational commitment and employee stress, which affect organisationaloutcomes i.e. productivity, high labour turnover and absenteeism, and individual outcomes i.e.physical, psychological and mental well-being.E However, despite the importance of the recruitment decision and the range of sophisticated and more objective selection techniques available, including the use of psychometric tests, assessment centres etc., many organisations are still prepared to make this decision on the basis ofa single 30 to 45 minute unstructured interview. Indeed, research has demonstrated that a selectiondecision is often made within the first four minutes of the interview. In the remaining time, theinterviewer then attends exclusively to information that reinforces the initial "accept" or "reject"decision. Research into the validity of selection methods has consistently demonstrated that theunstructured interview, where the interviewer asks any questions he or she likes, is a poor predictor of future job performance and fares little better that more controversial methodslikegraphology and astrology. In times of high unemployment,! recruitment becomes a "buyer's market" and this was the case in Britain during the 1980s.F The future, we are told, is likely to be different. Detailed surveys of social and economic trends in the European community show that Europe's population is falling and getting older, Thebirth rate in the Community is now only three-quarters of the level needed to ensure replacementof the existing population. By the year 2020, it is predicted that more than one in four Europeanswill be aged 60 or more and barely one in five will be under 20. In a five-year period between 1983 and 1988 the Community's female workforce grew by almost six million. As a result, 51% ofall women aged 14 to 64 are now economically active in the labour market compared with 78% ofmen.G The changing demographics will not only affect selection ratios. They will also make it increasingly important for organisations wishing to mainta in their competitive edge to be moreresponsive and accommodating to the changing needs of their workforce if they are to retain anddevelop their human resources. More flexible working hours, the opportunity of work from homeor job share, the provision of childcare facilities etc., will play a major role in attracting and retaining staff in the future.Questions 17-22Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 2?创作编号:GB8878185555334563BT9125XW创作者:凤呜大王*In boxes 17-22 on your answer sheet writeYES if the statement agrees with the writerNO if the statement does not agree with the writerNOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage17. Organisations should recognise that their employees are a significant part of theirfinancial assets.18. Open-structured 45 minute interviews are the best method to identify suitable employees.19. The rise in the female workforce in the European Community is a positive trend.20. Graphology is a good predictor of future fob performance.21. In the future, the number of people in employable age groups will decline.22. In 2020, the percentage of the population under 20 will be smaller than now. Questions 23-25Complete the notes below with words taken from Reading Passage 2. Use NO MORE THAN ONE or TWO WORDS for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 23-25 on your answer sheet.READING PASSAGE 3You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 26-38 which are based on Reading Passage 3on pages 9 and 10."The Rollfilm Revolution"The introduction of the dry plate process brought with it many advantages. Not only was it muchmore convenient, so that the photographer no longer needed to prepare his material in advance,but its much greater sensitivity made possible a new generation of cameras. Instantaneous exposures had been possible before, but only with some difficulty and with special equipment andconditions. Now, exposures short enough to permit the camera to the held in the hand were easilyachieved. As well as fitting shutters and viewfinders to their conventional stand cameras,manufacturers began to construct smaller cameras in tended specifically for hand use. One of the first designs to be published was Thomas Bolas' s 'Detective' camera of 1881. Externally a plain box, quite unlike the folding bellows camera typical of the period, it could beused unobtrusively. The name caught on, and for the next decade or so almost all hand cameralwere called ' Detectives', Many. of the new designs in the 1880s were for magazine cameras, inwhich a number of dry plates could be pre-loaded and changed one after another following exposure. Although much more convenient than stand cameras, still used by most serious workers,magazine plate cameras were heavy, and required access to a darkroom for loading and processing the plates. This was all changed by a young American bank clerk turned photographicmanufacturer, George Eastman, from Rochester, New York.Eastman had begun to manufacture gelatine dry plates in 1880. being one of the first to do so inAmerica. He soon looked for ways of simplifying photography, believing that many people wereput off by the complication and messiness. His first step was to develop, wih the camera manufacturer William H. Walker, a holder for a long roll of paper negative 'film'. This could befitted to a standard plate camera and up to forty-eight exposures made before reloading. The combined weight of the paper roll and the holder was far less than the same number of glass plates in their ling-tight wooden holders. Although roll-holders had been made as early as the1850s, none had been very successful be cause of the limitations of the photographic materialsthen available. Eastman's rollable paper film was sensitive and gave negatives of good quality;the Eastman-Walker roll-holder was a great success.The next step was to combine the roll-holder with a small hand camera; Eastman's first designwas patented with an employee, F. M. Cossitt, in 1886. It was not a success. Only fifty Eastmandetective cameras were made, and they were sold as a lot to a dealer in 1887; the cost was too high and the design too complicated. Eastman set about developing a new model, which was launched in June 1888. It was a small box, containing a roll of paperbased stripping film sufficient for 100 circular exposures 6 cm in diameter. Its operation was simple: set the shutter bypulling a wire string; aim the camera using the V line impression in the camera top; press the release botton to activate the exposure; and turn a special key to wind to the film. A hundred exposures had to be made, so it was important to record each picture in the memorandum bookprovided, since there was no exposure counter. Eastman gave his camera the invented name 'Kodak'-which was easily pronounceable in most languages. and had two Ks which Eastman feltwas a firm, uncompromising kind of letter.The importance of Eastman's new roll-film camera was not that it was the first. There had beenseveral earlier cameras, notably the Stirn 'America', first demonstrated in the spring of 1887 andon sale from early 1888. This also used a roll of negative paper, and had such refinements as areflecting viewfinder and an ingenious exposure marker. The real significance of the first Kodakcamera was that it was backed up by a developing and printing service. Hitherto ,virtually all photographers developed and printed their own pictures. This required that facilities of a darkroom and the time and inclination to handle the necessary chemicals, make the prints and soon. Eastman recognized that not everyone had the resources or the desire to do this. When a customer had made a hundred exposures in the Kodak camera, he sent it to Eastman's factory inRochester (or later in Harrow in England) where the film was unloaded, processed and printed,the camera reloaded and returned to the owner. "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest" ran Eastman's classic marketing slogan; photography had been brought to everyone. Everyone, that is,who could afford $ 25 or five guineas for the camera and $ 10 or two guineas for the developingand printing . A guinea ( $ 5 ) was a week's wages for many at the time, so this simple camera costthe equivalent of hundreds of dollars today.In 1889 an improved model with a new shutter design was introduced, and it was called the No. 2Kodak camera. The paper-based stripping film was complicated to manipulate, since the processed negative image had to be stripped from the paper base for printing. At the end of 1889Eastman launched a new roll film on a celluloid base. Clear, tough, transparent and flexible, thenew film not only made the rollfilm camera fully practical, but provided the raw material for theintroduction of cinematography a few years later. Other, larger models were introduced, includingseveral folding versions, one of which took pictures 21.6 cm x 16.5 cm in size. Other manufacturers in America and Europe introduced cameras to take the Kodak roll-films, and otherfirms began to offer developing and printing services for the benefit of the new breed ofPhotographers.By September 1889 , over 5,000 Kodak cameras had been sold in the USA, and the company wasdaily printing 6-7,000 negatives, Holidays and special events created enormous surges in demandfor processing: 900 Kodak users returned their cameras for processing and reloading in the week创作编号:GB8878185555334563BT9125XW创作者:凤呜大王*after the New York centennial celebration.Questions 26-29Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?In boxes 26-29 on your answer sheet writeYES if the statement agrees with the writerNO if the statement does agree with the writerNOTGIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage26. Before the dry plate process short exposures could only b achieved with cameras held in the hand.27. Stirn's America' camera lacked Kodak's developing service.28. The first Kodak film cost the equivalent of a week's wages to develop.29. Some of Eastman's 1891 range of cameras could be loaded in daylight.Questions 30-34Complete the diagram below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage foreach answer.Write your answers in boxes 30-34 on your answer sheet.Questions 35-38Complete the table below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage foreach answer.Write your answers in boxes 35-38 on your answer sheet.创作编号:GB8878185555334563BT9125XW创作者:凤呜大王*。