托福真题回忆 丨11月14日 托福考试详细机经

综合点评

本次考试阅读难度总体持平，主要围绕生物和历史类话题考的比较多，也有少量经济类文章。

Passage

one

学科分类

题目

自然科学-生物

破坏水下的coral

内容回忆

待补充

参考阅读

What is Coral?

Corals belong to a group of animals called cnidarians. This group encompasses hard and soft corals, sea fans, gorgonians, hydroids, jellyfish, and sea anemones.Although the group is remarkably diverse, there are a few features shared by all. They have a free-swimming larvalstage and a simple body plan: a central mouth, throughwhich material passes in and out of the body, and a ring of tentacles. The other distinguishing feature of the cnidarians is the presence of nematocysts (stinging cells), which are used to catch prey.

Individual corals are known as coral polyps; each is a single animal. In isolation a coral polyp looks very similarto a sea anemone, but unlike sea anemones, which live separated from each other, corals form colonies. A few species remain solitary, but in most cases, new polyps bud off the initial founding polyp, and graduallycolonies of thousands or even millions of polyps will grow, each connected to its neighbors by living tissue. Freed from the limitations of living alone, colonies can grow to immense sizes and live a very long time.

Corals belong to a group of animals called cnidarians. This group encompasses hard and soft corals, sea fans, gorgonians, hydroids, jellyfish, and sea anemones.Although the group is remarkably diverse, there are a few features shared by all. They have a free-swimming larvalstage and a simple body plan: a central mouth, throughwhich material passes in and out of the body, and a ring of tentacles. The other distinguishing feature of the cnidarians is the presence of nematocysts (stinging cells), which are used to catch prey.

Individual corals are known as coral polyps; each is a single animal. In isolation a coral polyp looks very similarto a sea anemone, but unlike sea anemones, which live separated from each other, corals form colonies. A few species remain solitary, but in most cases, new polyps bud off the initial founding polyp, and graduallycolonies of thousands or even millions of polyps will grow, each connected to its neighbors by living tissue. Freed from the limitations of living alone, colonies can grow to immense sizes and live a very long time.

Corals come in all shapes and sizes, but the basic plan is the same; polyps live as a surface layer on some sort of structure, be it hard and inflexible or rubbery. The hard, or true corals, for which reefs are most famous, build limestone skeletons beneath the living tissue. Softcorals, as their name implies, do not form solid skeletons; instead they secrete limestone crystal structures called sclerites, which are embedded within a jellylike matrix beneath the polyps. When they die, little is left of most soft corals as the limestone element of their makeup is so small and easily breaks up.

By contrast, some sea whips and fans and, notably, the black corals, have such dense skeletons of limestone, protein, and minerals that they are highly durable and are collected and polished for jewelry. The skeleton of black corals is more dense the slower it grows, and it grows more slowly at depth. So it is the very deep, older colonies that are most highly prize.

Corals belong to a group of animals called cnidarians. This group encompasses hard and soft corals, sea fans, gorgonians, hydroids, jellyfish, and sea anemones.Although the group is remarkably diverse, there are a few features shared by all. They have a free-swimming larvalstage and a simple body plan: a central mouth, throughwhich material passes in and out of the body, and a ring of tentacles. The other distinguishing feature of the cnidarians is the presence of nematocysts (stinging cells), which are used to catch prey.

Individual corals are known as coral polyps; each is a single animal. In isolation a coral polyp looks very similarto a sea anemone, but unlike sea anemones, which live separated from each other, corals form colonies. A few species remain solitary, but in most cases, new polyps bud off the initial founding polyp, and graduallycolonies of thousands or even millions of polyps will grow, each connected to its neighbors by living tissue. Freed from the limitations of living alone, colonies can grow to immense sizes and live a very long time.

Corals come in all shapes and sizes, but the basic plan is the same; polyps live as a surface layer on some sort of structure, be it hard and inflexible or rubbery. The hard, or true corals, for which reefs are most famous, build limestone skeletons beneath the living tissue. Softcorals, as their name implies, do not form solid skeletons; instead they secrete limestone crystal structures called sclerites, which are embedded within a jellylike matrix beneath the polyps. When they die, little is left of most soft corals as the limestone element of their makeup is so small and easily breaks up.

By contrast, some sea whips and fans and, notably, the black corals, have such dense skeletons of limestone, protein, and minerals that they are highly durable and are collected and polished for jewelry. The skeleton of black corals is more dense the slower it grows, and it grows more slowly at depth. So it is the very deep, older colonies that are most highly prize.

Coral reefs would not exist if it were not for the ability of coral polyps to secrete limestone or calciumcarbonate. Sea water surrounding a coral is very rich in dissolved calcium carbonate, but the fluid inside the polyp cannot retain a large quantity of calciumcarbonate, so it is laid down as microscopic needle-shaped crystals beneath and around the polyp. This process occurs in two stages. As the polyp expands to feed with its tentacles at night, it lifts off the skeleton, rather like a glove coming part way off a hand. At this stage, the calcium carbonate crystals form ridges. During the following day (when the coral polyp is retracted and lying on its new structure), the valleys between the ridges fill in with more calcium carbonate and the skeleton takes on a smoother appearance. Because the skeleton of hard corals is made of limestone or calcium carbonate, it is pure white.

Each coral species lays down its skeleton in a different way. This gives rise to the extraordinary range of shapes and forms that hard corals take. Some form large boulders, where the polyps live in small, isolated depressions or grooves in the skeleton. Some grow in branches, which can be small and stubby, while others are spreading, treelike structures. Still others grow delicate, leaflike plates or flat tables. The range is huge, and to complicate the matter further, the same species will grow in a different way depending on the physical characteristics of the place in which it finds itself. Although a coral’s genetic blueprint is fundamental in determining what it looks like, its appearance is also affected by waves, currents, light, and competition for space on the reef. Such variations in coralform have complicated the matter of identification over the years.

Passage

two

学科分类

题目

社会科学 历史

古代城市建设

内容回忆

待补充

参考阅读

The Development of Social Complexity

For most of human history, we have foraged (hunted, fished, and collected wild plants) for food. Small nomadicgroups could easily supply the necessities for their families. No one needed more, and providing for more than one’s needs made little sense. The organization of such societies could be rather simple, revolving around age and gender categories. Such societies likely were largely egalitarian, beyond distinctions based on age and gender, virtually all people had equivalent rights, status, and access to resources.

Archaeologist Donald Henry suggests that the combinationof a rich habitat and sedentism (permanent, year-round settlement) led to a dramatic increase in human population. In his view, nomadic, simple foragers have relatively low levels of fertility. Their high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets result in low body-fat levels, which are commonly associated with low fertility in women. High levels of physical activity and long periods of nursing, which are common among modern simple foragers, probably also contributed to low levels of female fertility if they were likewise common among ancient foragers.

In Henry's view, the adoption of a more settled existence in areas with abundant food resources would have contributed to higher fertility levels among the sedentary foragers. A diet higher in wild cereals produces proportionally more body fat, leading to higher fertilityamong women. Cereals, which are easy to digest, would have supplemented and then replaced mother's milk as the primary food for older infants. Since women are less fertile when they are breast-feeding, substituting cereals for mother's milk would have resulted in closer spacing of births and the potential for a greater number of live births for each woman. A more sedentary existence may also have lowered infant mortality and perhaps increased longevity among the aged. These more vulnerablemembers of society could safely stay in a fixed village rather than be forced regularly to move great distances as part of a nomadic existence, with its greater risk of accidents and trauma

All of these factors may have resulted in a trend of increasing size among some local human populations in the Holocene (since 9600 B C E ).   Given sufficient time, evenin very rich habitats, human population size can reachcarrying capacity, the maximum population an area can sustain within the context of a given subsistencesystem.   And human population growth is like a runaway tram once it picks up speed, it is difficult to control.   So evenafter reaching an area’s carrying capacity, Holocene human populations probably continued to grow in food-rich regions, overshooting the ability of the territory to feed the population, again within the context of the same subsistence strategy.   In some areas, small changes in climate or minor changes in plant characteristics may have further destabilized local economies.

One possible response to surpassing the carrying capacityof a region is for a group to exploit adjoining land. However, good land may itself be limited—for example, within the confines of a river valley where neighbors are in the same position, having filled up the whole of the desirable habitat available in their home territories, expansion is also problematic. Impinging on the neighbors' territory can lead to conflict, especially when they too are up against the capacity of the land to provide enough food.

Another option is to stay in the same area but to shift and intensify the food quest there. The impulse to produce more food to feed a growing population was satisfied in some areas by the development of more-complex subsistence strategies involving intensive labor and requiring more cooperation and greater coordination among the increasing numbers of people. This development resulted in a change in the social and economic equations that defined those societies.Hierarchies that did not exist in earlier foraging groups but that were helpful in structuring cooperative labor and in organizing more-complex technologies probably became established, even before domestication and agriculture, as pre-Neolithic societies (before the tenth millennium B C E) reacted to the population increase.

Passage Three

学科分类

题目

自然科学-生物

两栖动物的diversity

内容回忆

待补充

参考阅读

 Ecosystem Diversity and Stability Conservation biologists have long been concerned that species extinction could have significant consequences for the stability of entire ecosystems—groups of interacting organisms and the physical environment that they inhabit. An ecosystem could survive the loss of some species, but if enough species were lost, the ecosystem would be severely degraded. In fact, it is possible that the loss of a single important species could start a cascade of extinctions that might dramatically change an entire ecosystem. A good illustration of this occurred after sea otters were eliminated from some Pacific kelp (seaweed) bed ecosystems: the kelp beds were practically obliterated too because in the absence of sea otter predation, sea urchin populations exploded and consumed most of the kelp and other macroalgae.

It is usually claimed that species-rich ecosystems tend to be more stable than species-poor ecosystems. Three mechanisms by which higher diversity increases ecosystem stability have been proposed. First, if there are more species in an ecosystem, then its food web will be more complex, with greater redundancy among speciesin terms of their nutritional roles. In other words, in a rich system if a species is lost, there is a good chance that other species will take over its function as prey, predator, producer, decomposer, or whatever role it played. Second, diverse ecosystems may be less likely to be invaded by new species, notably exotics (foreign speciesliving outside their native range), that would disrupt the ecosystem’s structure and function. Third, in a species-rich ecosystem, diseases may spread more slowly because most species will be relatively less abundant, thus increasing the average distance between individuals of the same species and hampering disease transmission among individuals.Scientific evidence to illuminate these ideas has been slow in coming, and many shadows remain.   One of the first studies to provide data supporting a relationship between diversity and stability examined how grassland plants responded to a drought.   Researchers D. Tilman and J A. Downing used the ratio of above-ground biomass in 1988 (after two years of drought) to that in 1986 (predrought) in 207 plots in a grassland field in the Cedar Creek Natural History Area in Minnesota as an index of ecosystemresponse to disruption by drought. In an experiment that began in 1982, they compared these values with the number of plant species in each plot and discovered that the plots with a greater number of plant species experienced a less dramatic reduction in biomass. Plots with more than ten species had about half as much biomass in 1988 as in 1986, whereas those with fewer than five species only produced roughly one-eighth as much biomass after the two-year drought. Apparently, species-rich plots were likely to contain some drought-resistant plant species that grew better in drought years, compensating for the poor growth of less-tolerant species.

To put this result in more general terms, a species-rich ecosystem may be more stable because it is more likely to have species with a wide array of responses to variableconditions such as droughts. Furthermore, a species-rich ecosystem is more likely to have species with similarecological functions, so that if a species is lost from an ecosystem, another species, probably a competitor, is likely to flourish and occupy its functional role. Both of these, variability in responses and functional redundancy, could be thought of as insurance against disturbances.

The Minnesota grassland research has been widely accepted as strong evidence for the diversity- stability theory; however, its findings have been questioned, and similarstudies on other ecosystems have not always found a positive relationship between diversity and stability. Clearly, this is a complex issue that requires further fieldresearch with a broad spectrum of ecosystems and species: grassland plants and computer models will only take us so far. In the end, despite insightful attempts to detectsome general patterns, we may find it very difficult to reduce this topic to a simple, universal truth.

Passage Four

学科分类

题目

自然科学 生物

Magpie在城市数量增多

内容回忆

待补充

参考阅读

   The Debate over Spontaneous Generation Until the second half of the nineteenth century, many scientists and philosophers believed that some forms of life could arise spontaneously from nonliving matter; they called this hypothetical   process spontaneous generation. Not much more than 100 years ago, people commonly believed that toads, snakes, and mice could be born of moist soil; that flies could emerge from manure; and that maggots, the larvae of flies, could arise from decaying cor

A strong opponent of spontaneous generation, the Italian physician Francesco Redi, set out in 1668 to demonstrate that maggots did not arise spontaneously from decaying meat. Redi filled three jars with decaying meat and sealed them tightly. Then he arranged three other jars similarly but left them open. Maggots appeared in the open vessels after flies entered the jars and laid their eggs, but the sealed containers showed no signs of maggots. Still, Redi’s antagonists were not convinced; they claimed that fresh air was needed for spontaneous generation. So Redi set up a second experiment, in which three jars were covered with a fine net instead of being sealed. No larvaeappeared in the net-covered jars, even though air was present. Maggots appeared only when flies were allowed to leave their eggs on the meat.

Redi’s results were a serious blow to the long-held belief that large forms of life could arise from nonlife. However, many scientists still believed that tiny microorganisms were simple enough to be generated from nonliving materials.

The case for spontaneous generation of microorganisms seemed to be strengthened in 1745, when John Needham, an Englishman, found that even after he heated nutrientfluids (chicken broth and corn broth) before pouring them into covered flasks, the cooled solutions were soon teeming with microorganisms. Needham claimed that microbes developed spontaneously from the fluids. Twenty years later, Lazzaro Spallanzani, an Italian scientist, suggested that microorganisms from the air probably had entered Needham’s solutions after they were boiled. Spallanzani showed that nutrient fluids heated after being sealed in a flask did not develop microbial growth. Needham responded by claiming the “vital force” necessary for spontaneousgeneration had been destroyed by the heat and was kept out of the flasks by the seals.

This intangible “vital force” was given all the more credence shortly after Spallanzani’s experiment, when Laurent Lavoisier showed the importance of oxygen to life. Spallanzani’s observations were criticized on the grounds that there was not enough oxygen in the sealed flasks to support microbial life.

The issue was still unresolved in 1858, when the German scientist Rudolf Virchow challenged spontaneousgeneration with the concept of biogenesis, the claim that living cells can arise only from preexisting living cells. Arguments about spontaneous generation continued until 1861, when the work of the French scientist Louis Pasteur ended the debate.

With a series of ingenious and persuasive experiments, Pasteur demonstrated that microorganisms are present in the air and can contaminate sterile solutions, but airitself does not create microbes. He filled several short-necked flasks with beef broth and then boiled their contents. Some were then left open and allowed to cool. In a few days, these flasks were found to be contaminated with microbes. The other flasks, sealed after boiling, were free of microorganisms. From these results, Pasteur reasoned that microbes in the air were the agents responsible for contaminating nonliving matter such as the broths in Needham’s flasks.

Pasteur next placed broth in open-ended long-necked flasks and bent the necks into S-shaped curves. The contents of these flasks were then boiled and cooled. The broth in the flasks did not decay and showed no signs of life, even after months. Pasteur’s unique design allowed air to pass into the flask, but the curved neck trapped any airbornemicroorganisms that might have contaminated the broth.

Pasteur showed that microorganisms can be present in nonliving matter—on solids, in liquids, and in the air. His work provided evidence that microorganisms cannot originate from mysterious forces present in nonliving materials. Rather, any appearance of “spontaneous” life in nonliving solutions can be attributed to microorganisms that were already present in the air or in the fluids themselves.

Passage

Five

学科分类

题目

社会科学

摄影对艺术的影响

内容回忆

待补充

参考阅读

Crafts in the Ancient Near East some of the earliest human civilizations arose in southern Mesopotamia, in what is now southern Iraq, in the fourth millennium B.C.E. In the second half of the millennium, in the south around the city of Uruk, there was an enormous escalation in the area occupied by permanentsettlements. A large part of that increase took place in Uruk itself, which became a real urban center surrounded by a set of secondary settlements. While population estimates are notoriously unreliable, scholars assume that Uruk inhabitants were able to support themselves from the agricultural production of the field surrounding the city, which could be reached with a daily commute.   But Uruk’s dominant size in the entire region, far surpassing that of other settlements, indicates that it was a regional center and a true city. Indeed, it was the first city in human history

The vast majority of its population remained active in agriculture, even those people living within the city itself. But a small segment of the urban society started to specialize in nonagricultural tasks as a result of the city’s role as a regional center. Within the productive sector, there was a growth of a variety of specialist craftspeople. Early in the Uruk period, the use of undecorated utilitarianpottery was probably the result of specialized massproduction. In an early fourth-millennium level of the Eanna archaeological site at Uruk, a pottery style appears that is most characteristic of this process, the so-calledbeveled-rim bowl. It is a rather shallow bowl that was crudely made in a mold; hence, in only a limited number of standard sizes. For some unknown reason, many were discarded, often still intact, and thousands have been found all over the Near East. The beveled-rim bowl is one of the most telling diagnostic finds for identifying an Uruk-period site. Of importance is the fact that it was produced rapidly in large amounts, most likely by specialists in a central location.

A variety of documentation indicates that certain goods, once made by a family member as one of many duties, were later made by skilled artisans. Certain images depict groups of people, most likely women, involved in weaving textiles, an activity we know from later third-millennium texts to have been vital in the economy and to have been centrally administered. Also, a specialized metal-producing workshop may have been excavated in a small area at Uruk. It contained a number of channels lined by a sequence of holes, about 50 centimeters deep, all showing burn marks and filled with ashes. This has been interpreted as the remains of a workshop where molten metal was scooped up from the channel and poured into molds in the holes. Some type of mass production by specialists were involved here.

Objects themselves suggest that they were the work of skilled professionals. In the late Uruk period(3500-3100 B.C.E.), there first appeared a type of object that remained characteristic for Mesopotamia throughout its entire history: the cylinder seal. This was a small cylinder, usually no more than 3 centimeters high and 2 centimeters in diameter, of shell, bone, faience (a glassy type of stoneware), or various types of stones, on which a scenewas carved into the surface. When rolled over a softmaterial----primarily the clay of bullae (round seals), tablets, or clay lumps attached to boxes, jars, or door bolts----the scene would appear in relief, easily legible. The technological knowledge needed to carved it was far superior to that for stamp seals, which had happened in the early Neolithic period (approximately 10,000-5000 B.C.E.). From the first appearance of cylinder seals, the carved scenes could be highly elaborate and refined, indicating the work of specialist stone-cutters. Similarly, the late Uruk period shows the first monumental art, relief, and statuary in the round, made with a degree of mastery that only a professional could have produced.

Passage

Six

学科分类

题目

社会科学-历史

欧洲铸铁的历史

内容回忆

待补充

参考阅读

Background for the Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution had several roots, one of which was a commercial revolution that, beginning as far back as the sixteenth century, accompanied Europe’s expansion overseas. Both exports and imports showed spectacular growth, particularly in England and France. An increasingly larger portion of the stepped-up commercialactivity was the result of trade with overseas colonies.Imports included a variety of new beverages, spices, and ship’s goods around the world and brought money flowing back. Europe’s economic institutions, particularly those in England, were strong, had wealth available for new investment, and seemed almost to be waiting for some technological breakthrough that would expand their profit-making potential   even more.

The breakthrough came in Great Britain, where several economic advantages created a climate especially favorable to the encouragement of new technology. One was its geographic location at the crossroads of international trade. Internally, Britain was endowed with easily navigable natural waterway, which helped its trade and communication with the world. Beginning in the 1770’s, it enjoyed a boom in canal building, which helped make its domestic market more accessible. Because water transportation was the cheapest means of carrying goods to market, canals reduced prices and thus increased consumer demand. Great Britain also had rich deposits of coal that fed the factories springing up in industrial and consumer goods.

Another advantage was Britain’s large population of rural, agricultural wage earners, as well as cottage workers, who had the potential of being more mobile than peasants of some other countries. Eventually they found their way to the cities or mining communities and provided the human power upon which the Industrial Revolution was built.The British people were also consumers; the absence of internal tariffs, such as those that existed in France or Italy or between the German states, made Britain the largest free-trade area in Europe. Britain’s relatively stablegovernment also helped create an atmosphereconducive to industrial progress.

Great Britain’s better-developed banking and credit system also helped speed the industrial progress, as did the fact that it was the home of an impressive array of entrepreneurs and inventors. Among them were a large number of nonconformists whose religious principles encouraged thrift and industry rather than luxurious living and who tended to pour their profits back into their business, thus providing the basis for continued expansion.

A precursor to the Industrial Revolution was a revolution in agricultural techniques. Ideas about agricultural reform developed first in Holland, where as early as the mid-seventeenth century, such modern methods as crop rotation, heavy fertilization, and diversification were all in use. Dutch peasant farmers were known throughout Europe for their agricultural innovations, but as British markets and opportunities grew, the English quickly learned from them. As early as the seventeenth century the Dutch were helping them drainmarshes and fens where, with the help of advancedtechniques, they grew new crops. By the mid-eighteenth century new agricultural methods as well as selectivebreeding of livestock had caught on throughout the country.

Much of the increased production was consumed by Great Britain’s burgeoning population. At the same time, people were moving to the city, partly because of the enclosure movement; that is, the fencing of common fields and pastures in order to provide more compact, efficientprivately held agricultural parcels that would produce more goods and greater profits. In the sixteenth centuryenclosures were usually used for creating sheep pastures, but by the eighteenth century new farming techniques made it advantageous for large landowners to seek enclosures in order to improve agricultural production.Between 1714 and 1820 over 6 million acres of English land were enclosed.   As a result, many small, independentfarmers were forced to sell out simply because they could not compete.   Non-landholding peasants and cottage workers, who worked for wages and grazed cows or pigs on the village common, were also hurt when the commonwas no longer available.   It was such people who began to flock to the cities seeking employment and who found work in the factories that would transform the nation and, the world.   

Passage

Seven

学科分类

题目

社会科学

过度捕鱼

内容回忆

待补充

参考阅读

The origin of Earth’s atmosphere

  In order to understand the origin of Earth's atmosphere, we must go back to the earliest days of the solar system, before the planets themselves were formed from a disk of rocky material spinning around the young Sun. This material gradually coalesced into lumps called planetesimals as gravity and chance smashed smaller pieces together, a chaotic and violent process that became more so as planetesimals grew in size and gravitational pull. Within each orbit, collisions between planetesimals generated immense heat and energy. How violent these processes were is suggested by the odd tilt and spin of many of the planets, which indicate that each of the planets was, like a billiard ball, struck at some stage by another large body of some kind. Visual evidence of these processes can be seen by looking at the Moon. Because the Moon has no atmosphere, its surface is not subject to erosion, so it retains the marks of its early history. Its face is deeply scarred by millions of meteoric impacts, as you can see on a clear night with a pair of binoculars. The early Earth did not have much of an atmosphere. Before it grew to full size, its gravitational pull was insufficient to prevent gases from drifting off into space, while the solar wind (the great stream of atomic particles emitted from the Sun) had already driven away much of the gaseous material from the inner orbits of the solar system. So we must imagine the early Earth as a mixture of rocky materials, metals, and trapped gases, subject to constant bombardment by smaller planetesimals and without much of an atmosphere.

  As it began to reach full size, Earth heated up, partly because of collisions with other planetesimals and partly because of increasing internal pressures as it grew in size. In addition, the early Earth contained abundant radioactive materials, also a source of heat. As Earth heated up, its interior melted. Within the molten interior, under the influence of gravity, different elements were sorted out by density. By about 40 million years after the formation of the solar system, most of the heavier metallic elements in the early Earth, such as iron and nickel, had sunk through the hot sludge to the center giving Earth a core dominated by iron. This metallic core gives Earth its characteristic magnetic field, which has played an extremely important role in the history of our planet.

  As heavy materials headed for the center of Earth, lighter silicates (such as the mineral quartz) drifted upward. The denser silicates formed Earth's mantle, a region almost 3,000 kilometers thick between the core and the crust. With the help of bombardment by comets, whose many impacts scarred and heated Earth's surface, the lightest silicates rose to Earth's surface, where they cooled more rapidly than the better- insulated materials in Earth's interior. These lighter materials, such as the rocks we call granites, formed a layer of continental crust about 35 kilometers thick. Relative to Earth as a whole, this is as thin as an eggshell. Seafloor crust is even thinner, at about 7 kilometers; thus, even continental crust reaches only about 1/200th of the way to Earth's core. Much of the early continental crust has remained on Earth's surface to the present day.

  The lightest materials of all, including gases such as hydrogen and helium, bubbled through Earth's interior to the surface. So we can imagine the surface of the early Earth as a massive volcanic field. And we can judge pretty well what gases bubbled up to that surface by analyzing the mixture of gases emitted by volcanoes. These include hydrogen, helium, methane, water vapor, nitrogen, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide. Other materials, including large amounts of water vapor, were brought in by cometary bombardments. Much of the hydrogen and helium escaped; but once Earth was fully formed, it was large enough for its gravitational field to hold most of the remaining gases, and these formed Earth's first stable atmosphere.

  Paragraph 1: In order to understand the origin of Earth's atmosphere, we must go back to the earliest days of the solar system, before the planets themselves were formed from a disk of rocky material spinning around the young Sun. This material gradually coalesced into lumps called planetesimals as gravity and chance smashed smaller pieces together, a chaotic and violent process that became more so as planetesimals grew in size and gravitational pull. Within each orbit, collisions between planetesimals generated immense heat and energy. How violent these processes were is suggested by the odd tilt and spin of many of the planets, which indicate that each of the planets was, like a billiard ball, struck at some stage by another large body of some kind. Visual evidence of these processes can be seen by looking at the Moon. Because the Moon has no atmosphere, its surface is not subject to erosion, so it retains the marks of its early history. Its face is deeply scarred by millions of meteoric impacts, as you can see on a clear night with a pair of binoculars. The early Earth did not have much of an atmosphere. Before it grew to full size, its gravitational pull was insufficient to prevent gases from drifting off into space, while the solar wind (the great stream of atomic particles emitted from the Sun) had already driven away much of the gaseous material from the inner orbits of the solar system. So we must imagine the early Earth as a mixture of rocky materials, metals, and trapped gases, subject to constant bombardment by smaller planetesimals and without much of an atmosphere.

Passage

Eight

学科分类

题目

社会科学类

日本的wookblock painting

参考阅读

Paleolithic Cave Paintings

In any investigation of the origins of art, attention focuses on the cave paintings created in Europe during the Paleolithic era (c. 40,000-10,000 years ago) such as those depicting bulls and other animals in the Lascaux cave in France. Accepting that they are the best preserved and most visible signs of what was a global creative explosion, how do we start to explain their appearance? Instinctively, we may want to update the earliest human artists by assuming that they painted for the sheer joy of painting. The philosophers of Classical Greece recognized it as a defining trait of humans to "delight in works of imitation"—to enjoy the very act and triumph of representation. If we were close to a real lion or snake, we might feel frightened. But a well- executed picture of a lion or snake will give us pleasure. Why suppose that our Paleolithic ancestors were any different?

This simple acceptance of art for art's sake has a certain appeal. To think of Lascaux as a gallery allows it to be a sort of special viewing place where the handiwork of accomplished artists might be displayed. Plausibly, daily existence in parts of Paleolithic Europe may not have been so hard, with an abundance of ready food and therefore the leisure time for art. The problems with this explanation, however, are various. In the first place, the proliferation of archaeological discoveries—and this includes some of the world's innumerablerock art sites that cannot be dated—has served to emphasize a remarkablylimited repertoire of subjects. The images that recur are those of animals.Human figures are unusual, and when they do make an appearance, they are rarely done with the same attention to form accorded to the animals. If Paleolithic artists were simply seeking to represent the beauty of the world around them, would they not have left a far greater range of pictures—of trees, flowers, of the Sun and the stars?

A further question to the theory of art for art's sake is posed by the high incidence of Paleolithic images that appear not to be imitative of any reality whatsoever. These are geometrical shapes or patterns consisting of dots or lines. Such marks may be found isolated or repeated over a particular surface but also scattered across more recognizable forms. A good example of this may be seen in the geologically spectacular grotto of Pêche Merle, in the Lot region of France. Here we encounter some favorite animals from the Paleolithicrepertoire—a pair of stout-bellied horses. But over and around the horses' outlines are multiple dark spots, daubed in disregard for the otherwise naturalistic representation of animals. What does such patterning imitate?There is also the factor of location. The caves of Lascaux might conceivably qualify as underground galleries, but many other paintings have been found in recesses totally unsuitable for any kind of viewing—tight nooks and crannies that must have been awkward even for the artists to penetrate, let alone for anyone else wanting to see the art.

Finally, we may doubt the notion that the Upper Paleolithic period was a paradise in which food came readily, leaving humans ample time to amuse themselves with art. 【*】For Europe it was still the Ice Age. 【*】An estimate of the basic level of sustenance then necessary for human survival has been judged at 2200 calories per day. 【*】This consideration, combined with the stark emphasis upon animals in the cave art, has persuaded some archaeologists that the primary motive behind Paleolithic images must lie with the primary activity of Paleolithic people: hunting. 【*】

Hunting is a skill. Tracking, stalking, chasing, and killing the prey are difficult, sometimes dangerous activities. What if the process could be made easier—by art? In the early decades of the twentieth century, Abbé Henri Breuil argued that the cave paintings were all about “sympathetic magic. ” The artists strived diligently to make their animal images evocative and realistic because they were attempting to capture the spirit of their prey. What could have prompted their studious attention to making such naturalistic, recognizable images?According to Breuil, the artists may have believed that if a hunter were able to make a true likeness of some animal, then that animal was virtually trapped.Images, therefore, may have had the magical capacity to confer success or luck in the hunt.

                           综合点评

11.14 以下为考生回忆，回忆不全。

                          Conversation

话题分类

校园生活

内容回忆

团队合作，老师确定一个概念

                           Conversation

话题分类

校园生活

内容回忆

一个会画画，又回乡村音乐的人。

                            Conversation

话题分类

校园生活

内容回忆

计算机辅助建筑设计

                                Lecture

话题分类

地质学

内容回忆

地幔的过渡带里面有水。

                                Lecture

Lecture

话题分类

人类学

内容回忆

人类学

Task 1

内容回忆

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? It is always best to state your honest opinion, even when you know that others disagree.

参考答案

Personally, I think it is always better to state your honest opinion no matter what, even when you face the risk of having others around you to hold different or sometimes even completely opposite opinions. Because in this way, people around you can know you better and truly understand what kind of person you are. and that's the foundation and cornerstone of deeper understanding. Even if at first, you may experience some conflicts, in order to form meaningful relationship, this process is necessary. For example, when I first met my roommates in university, I clearly stated that I didn't like people to be noisy late at night, and they were kind of upset at first because there were crazy video game fans. But as time goes on, they gradually started to understand my point, and now we are all very good friends

Task 2

阅读

某学生建议举办一个student life video contest，只有大三大四学生可以参加，因为大三大四学生有more experience

听力

女生同意，

原因1. more attractive，比如宿舍食堂等更吸引人，看到其他学校也有类似的video of dorm、food之类的

原因2. 仅限大三大四有道理，减少工作量。讨论中穿插了男生的态度，男生不同意这个限制，因为他自己是二年级学生也想参加，女生正好反驳说因为像男生这种感兴趣的人太多了，所以确实需要限制人数。

Task 3

阅读

概念暂无

听力

例子中有科学家尝试用pea carb和worm结合做实验，观察其对worm是否有害

Task 4

话题

很多因素会令人们不愿意去买产品

听力

因素一：cost，例子organic food，虽然很好但是太贵了所以人们不买；

因素二：performance，例子detergent，由于性能好，尽管对环境不友好，人们也买

综合点评

这次托福考试写作部分整体比较简单。

其中，综合写作考查教育类，整体难度适中。

独立写作考查友谊类话题，虽然有点抽象，但是还是一道比较好写的题目，建议考生在备考过程中尽量多积累一些话题相关素材，更能沉着应对各类话题考试。

综合写作

话题分类

教育类

考题回忆

总论点

elementary school音乐教育是否值得

阅读部分

认为不值得：

1. 学生要节约时间学数学和语言

2. 学校没钱雇老师和买乐器

3. 很多学生不成为音乐家，即使想成为音乐家，学校教育也不够

听力部分

反驳：

1. 音乐有助于学习数学，音乐里面音符能助于学生学fraction，学音乐能让学生了解不同声音不同含义，有助于学习语言

2. 学校可以雇佣退休老师，免费。还可以租乐器给学生，赚点钱

3. 音乐教育让学生拥有欣赏音乐的能力

解题思路

传统四段式写作，每一段阅读内容+听力内容，注意细节和同义替换

参考范文

Both the reading and the lecture are talking about whether music education is worthy at elementary school. The author of the reading claims that there is no need to involve it, while the lecturer challenges this perspective by providing tree reasons.   

The reading first claims that at primary stage, students need time to study mathematics and languages. The lecturer, however, rebuts this by mentioning that music is beneficial to math, because the note can help pupils learn fraction. Also, music can help students learn different meanings of different sounds, which is helpful for learning languages as well.

Secondly, the reading passage conceives that students lack the money to employ teachers and buy musical instruments. The listening, by contrast, says that schools can hire retired teachers, which is free. Besides that, they can also rent instruments to students and can even make money through this method.

In the final analysis, the writer in the reading asserts that many students just do not want to become musicians, and even if they want to be musicians, school education is not enough. The professor in the lecture points out that despite that, music education can make students have the ability to appreciate music, which is also very important for primary students.

独立写作

话题分类

友谊类

考题回忆

Some people believe that friendships become stronger when friends enjoy good times together. Others believe that friendships become stronger when friends talk about their problems with each other and support each other. Which of these two approaches do you feel is most useful in helping make a friendship stronger?

解题思路

立场：同意第二个观点

原因：

1. 患难见真情，在困难中能够支持的朋友更加真诚相待，从而更有助于维持长期友谊

2. 因为对方的支持而感恩，如果以后对方遇到问题，自己也会更加乐于去帮助朋友度过难关，从而形成长久的友谊，甚至成为一生的朋友

观点

让步：

1. 一起度过开心的时光属于朋友之间快乐的分享，能够增加彼此在一起的快乐回忆

2. 有助于培养共同的兴趣爱好，以助于以后的关系发展

反驳：

但是，朋友之间友谊的增强更多的是看朋友在我们心中留下的印记，那些能够在困难的时候彼此支持，相互扶持走出阴霾的朋友一定比只是可以和彼此开心玩耍的朋友更加能够给到彼此更多的心灵慰藉，从而更加能够增进长久的友谊

参考范文

范文：

Throughout people’s whole life, they may encounter many people and subsequently become friends with each other. Since friendship is one of the most valuable things in our life, we would all cherish these friends. But which approach is the most useful in helping making a friendship stronger? Some people contend enjoying good times together, whereas others point out that talking problems and supporting each other is more effective. Personally, I believe support is of vital significance to maintain a stronger friendship, and people should always try their utmost to help their friends to get through their difficulties.     

There are two main reasons. First of all, a friend in need is a friend indeed. Those who can talk about problems with each other and support each other must be the most honest ones. With their company, it can be easier for us to pluck up the courage to deal with the misery in life, whether emotional or financial distress, thus contributing to a lifelong friendship. Additionally, people may feel grateful due to friends’ assistance, so if these friends encounter problems in their life, we would be more likely to help and support them, which can form a virtuous circle and is conducive to enhance the relationship with friends.

Admittedly, enjoying good times together is also another contributing factor. This is mainly because this period of time can also be seen as an opportunity for people to share, and this experience give each other happy memories. At the same time, spending good time together can also play a positive role in helping people to nurturing some common interests, which is also an important factor for friendship. However, it is only those assisting us who can leave a deep impression in our memories. Compared with those only having fun together, the friends we talk to when we have difficulties in life and those who support us always can give us more comfort and courage. This memory is enduring and even can last for our whole life. That is why I firmly believe talking problems with each other can be the most effective to strengthen the bond between friends.

To sum up, although spending good time with each other can benefit the relationship with friends, getting through difficulties with each other is a more useful method for a closer, stronger and even more lasting friendship.