综合点评

本次考试阅读整体难度不是很大，主要围绕社科和生物类话题考的比较多，也有少量环境科学、艺术类文章。

Passage

one

学科分类

题目

自然科学-环境

城市热岛效应

内容回忆

关于城市热岛效应的形成条件

参考阅读

Urban Climates

The city is an extraordinary processor of mass and energy and has its own metabolism. A daily input of water, food, and energy of various kinds is matched by an output of sewage, solid waste, air pollutants, energy, and materials that have been transformed in some way. The quantities involved are enormous. Many aspects of this energy use affect the atmosphere of a city, particularly in the production of heat.

In winter the heat produced by a city can equal or surpass the amount of heat available from the Sun. All the heat that warms a building eventually transfers to the surrounding air, a process that is quickest where houses are poorly insulated. But an automobile produces enough heat to warm an average house in winter, and if a house were perfectly insulated, one adult could also produce more than enough heat to warm it. Therefore, even without any industrial production of heat, an urban area tends to be warmer than the countryside that surrounds it.

The burning of fuel, such as by cars, is not the only source of this increased heat. Two other factors contribute to the higher overall temperature in cities. The first is the heat capacity of the materials that constitute the city, which is typically dominated by concrete and asphalt. During the day, heat from the Sun can be conducted into these materials and stored—to be released at night. But in the countryside materials have a significantly lower heat capacity because a vegetative blanket prevents heat from easily flowing into and out of the ground. The second factor is that radiant heat coming into the city from the Sun is trapped in two ways: (1) by a continuing series of reflection among the numerous vertical surfaces that buildings present and (2) by the dust dome, the cloudlike layer of polluted air that most cities produce. Shortwave radiation from the Sun passes through the pollution dome more easily than outgoing longwave radiation does; the latter is absorbed by the gaseous pollutants of the dome and reradiated back to the urban surface.

Cities, then, are warmer than the surrounding rural areas, and together they produce a phenomenon known as the urban heat island. Heat islands develop best under particular conditions associated with light winds, but they can form almost any time. The precise configuration of a heat island depends on several factors. For example, the wind can make a heat island stretch in the direction it blows. When a heat island is well developed, variations can be extreme; in winter, busy streets in cities can be 1.7℃warmer than the side streets. Areas near traffic lights can be similarly warmer than the areas between them because of the effect of cars standing in traffic instead of moving. The maximum differences in temperature between neighboring urban and rural environments is called the heat-island intensity for that region. In general, the larger the city, the greater its heat-island intensity. The actual level of intensity depends on such factors as the physical layout, population density, and productive activities of a metropolis.

The surface-atmosphere relationships inside metropolitan areas produce a number of climatic peculiarities. For one thing, the presence or absence of moisture is affected by the special qualities of the urban surface. With much of the built-up landscape impenetrable by water, even gentle rain runs off almost immediately from rooftops, streets, and parking lots. Thus, city surfaces, as well as the air above them, tend to be drier between episodes of rain; with little water available for the cooling process of evaporation, relative humidities are usually lower. Wind movements are also modified in cities because buildings increase the friction on air flowing around them. This friction tends to slow the speed of winds, making them far less efficient at dispersing pollutants. On the other hand, air turbulence increases because of the effect of skyscrapers on airflow. Rainfall is also increased in cities. The cause appears to be in part greater turbulence in the urban atmosphere as hot air rises from the built-up surface.

Passage

two

学科分类

题目

社科-历史

trade in the fourteen century

内容回忆

14世纪港口贸易的兴起

参考阅读

England's Economy in the Sixteenth Century

In the last half of the sixteenth century England emerged as a commercial and manufacturing power in Europe due to a combination of demographic, agricultural and industrial factors. The population of England and Wales grew rapidly from about 2.5 million in the 1520s to more than 3.5 million in 1580, reaching about 4.5 million in 1610. Reduced mortality rates and increased fertility, the latter probably generated by expanding work opportunities in manufacturing and farming (leading to earlier marriage and more children), explained this rapid rise in population. While epidemics and plague occasionally took their toll, the people in England still suffered less than did those in continental Europe. Furthermore, the country had been pulled out of the war that occurred in France and central Europe during the same period.

England provides the prominent example of the expansion of agricultural production well before the general European agricultural revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A larger population stimulated the increased woolen through crop civilization. English agriculture became more efficient and market-oriented than almost anywhere else on the continent. Between 1450 and 1640 the yield of grain per acre increased by at least thirty percent. In sharp contrast with farming in Spain, English land owners brought more dense marshes and woodlands into cultivation.

The great land estates of the English society largely remained intact and many wealthy land owners aggressively increased the size of their holdings, a precondition for increased productivity. Marriages between the children of landowners also increased the size of land estates. Primogeniture (the full inheritance of land by the eldest son) helped prevent land from being subdivided. Younger sons of independent land owners left the family and went to find other respective locations. Larger farms were conducive more to commercialized farming at the time when an expanding population pushed up demand and prices. Farmland owners turned part of their land into pasture land for sheep in order to adapt to developing woolen trade.

Some of the great land owners as well as Yeomen (farmers whose holdings and security of land tenure guaranteed their prosperity and status), organized their holdings in the interest efficiency. Many farmers selected crops for sales in growing London market. In their quest for greater profits, many land owners put their squeeze on their tenants. Between 1580 and 1620 land lords raised rents and altered conditions of land tenure in their favor, preferring shorter phases and forcing tenants to pay an entry fee before agreeing to rent them land. Landlords evicted those who could not afford annual, more onerous terms. But they also pushed tenants toward more productive farming methods, including crop rotation.

England's exceptional economic development also drew the country's natural resources, including iron, timber, and coal, extracted in far greater quantity than elsewhere in the continent. New industrial development expanded the production of iron and pewter in and around the city of Birmingham.

But above all textile manufacturing transformed English economy. Woolens, which accounted for eighty percent of the exports, worsteds (sturdy yarn spun from combed wool fibers), and other cloth found eager buyers in England as well as in the continent. Moreover, late in the sixteenth century as English merchants began making forays across the Atlantic these textiles were also sold in the Americas. Cloth manufacturers undercut production by urban craftspeople by "putting out" work to the villages and farms of the countryside. In such domestic industry poor rural women could spin and make cading (combing fibers in preparation for spin) in their homes.

The English textile trade was closely tied to Antwerp, in the Spanish Netherlands, where workers dyed English cloth. The entrepreneur Sir Thomas Gresham became England's representative there. He so enhanced the reputation of English business in that region that English merchants could operate on credit---the most prominent achievement for sixteenth century. He also advised the government to explore the economic possibilities of Americas, which led to the first concerted efforts at colonization, undertaken with commercial profits in mind.

Passage Three

学科分类

题目

社科类-农业

Agriculture in Southwest Africa

内容回忆

关于southwest Africa 的农业

参考阅读

Seventeenth-Century Dutch Agriculture

Agriculture and fishing formed the primary sector of the economy in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Dutch agriculture was modernized and commercialized new crops and agricultural techniques raised levels of production so that they were in line with market demands, and cheap grain was imported annually from the Baltic region in large quantities. According to estimates, about 120,000 tons of imported grain fed about 600,000 people: that is about a third of the Dutch population. Importing the grain, which would have been expensive and time consuming for the Dutch to have produced themselves, kept the price of grain low and thus stimulated individual demand for other foodstuffs and consumer goods.

Apart from this, being able to give up labor-intensive grain production freed both the land and the workforce for more productive agricultural divisions. The peasants specialized in livestock husbandry and dairy farming as well as in cultivating industrial crops and fodder crops: flax, madder, and rape were grown, as were tobacco, hops, and turnips. These products were bought mostly by urban businesses. There was also a demand among urban consumers for dairy products such as butter and cheese, which, in the sixteenth century, had become more expensive than grain. The high prices encouraged the peasants to improve their animal husbandry techniques; for example, they began feeding their animals indoors in order to raise the milk yield of their cows.

In addition to dairy farming and cultivating industrial crops, a third sector of the Dutch economy reflected the way in which agriculture was being modernized-horticulture. In the sixteenth century, fruit and vegetables were to be found only in gardens belonging to wealthy people. This changed in the early part of the seventeenth century when horticulture became accepted as an agricultural sector. Whole villages began to cultivate fruit and vegetables. The produce was then transported by water to markets in the cities, where the consumption of fruit and vegetables was no longer restricted to the wealthy.

As the demand for agricultural produce from both consumers and industry increased, agricultural land became more valuable and people tried to work the available land more intensively and to reclaim more land from wetlands and lakes. In order to increase production on existing land, the peasants made more use of crop rotation and, in particular, began to apply animal waste to the soil regularly, rather than leaving the fertilization process up to the grazing livestock. For the first time industrial waste, such as ash from the soap-boilers, was collected in the cities and sold in the country as artificial fertilizer. The increased yield and price of land justified reclaiming and draining even more land.

The Dutch battle against the sea is legendary. Noorderkwartier in Holland, with its numerous lakes and stretches of water, was particularly suitable for land reclamation and one of the biggest projects undertaken there was the draining of the Beemster lake which began in 1608. The richest merchants in Amsterdam contributed money to reclaim a good 7,100 hectares of land. Forty-three windmills powered the drainage pumps so that they were able to lease the reclamation to farmers as early as 1612, with the investors receiving annual leasing payments at an interest rate of 17 percent. Land reclamation continued, and between 1590 and 1665, almost 100,000 hectares were reclaimed from the wetland areas of Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland. However, land reclamation decreased significantly after the middle of the seventeenth century because the price of agricultural products began to fall, making land reclamation far less profitable in the second part of the century.

Dutch agriculture was finally affected by the general agricultural crisis in Europe during the last two decades of the seventeenth century. However, what is astonishing about this is not that Dutch agriculture was affected by critical phenomena such as a decrease in sales and production, but the fact that the crisis appeared only relatively late in Dutch agriculture. In Europe as a whole, the exceptional reduction in the population and the related fall in demand for grain since the beginning of the seventeenth century had caused the price of agricultural products to fall. Dutch peasants were able to remain unaffected by this crisis for a long time because they had specialized in dairy farming industrial crops, and horticulture. However, toward the end of the seventeenth century, they too were overtaken by the general agricultural crisis.

Passage Four

学科分类

题目

生物-海洋生物

Marine biodiversity

内容回忆

关于海洋生态多样性

参考阅读

Latitude and Biodiversity

When we look at the way in which biodiversity (biological diversity) is distributed over the land surface of the planet, we find that it is far from even. The tropics contain many more species overall than an equivalent area at the higher latitudes. This seems to be true for many different groups of animals and plants.

Why is it that higher latitudes have lower diversities than the tropics? Perhaps it is simply a matter of land area.The tropics contain a larger surface area of land than higher latitudes—a fact that is not always evident when we examine commonly used projections of Earth’s curved surface, since this tends to exaggerate the areas of land in the higher latitudes—and some biogeographers regard the differences in diversity as a reflection of this effect. But an analysis of the data by biologist Klaus Rohde does not support this explanation. Although area may contribute to biodiversity, it is certainly not the whole story; otherwise, large landmasses would always be richer in species.

Productivity seems to be involved instead, though perhaps its influence is indirect. Where conditions are most suitable for plant growth—that is, where temperatures are relatively high and uniform and where there is an ample supply of water—one usually finds large masses of vegetation. This leads to a complex structure in the layers of plant material. In a tropical rain forest, for example, a very large quantity of plant material builds up above the surface of the ground .There is also a large mass of material, developed below ground as root tissues, but this is less apparent. Careful analysis of the above ground material reveals that it is arranged in a series of layers, the precise number of layers varying with age and the nature of the forest. The arrangement of the biological mass ("biomass") of the vegetation into layered forms is termed its “structure” (as opposed to its “composition,” which refers to the species of organisms forming the community). Structure is essentially the architecture of vegetation, and as in the case of tropical forests, it can be extremely complicated. In a mature floodplain tropical forest in the Amazon River basin, the canopy (the uppermost layers of a forest, formed by the crowns of trees) takes on a stratified structure. There are three clear peaks in leaf cover at heights of approximately 3, 6, and 30 meters above the ground; and the very highest layer, at 50 meters, corresponds to the very tall trees that stand free of the main canopy and form an open layer of their own. So, such a forest contains essentially four layers of canopy. Forests in temperate lands often have just two canopy layers, so they have much less complex architecture.

Structure has a strong influence on the animal life inhabiting a site. It forms the spatial environment within which an animal feeds, moves around shelters, lives, and breeds. It even affects the climate on a very local level (the "microclimate") by influencing light intensity, humidity, and both the range and extremes of temperature. An area of grassland vegetation with very simple structure, for example, has a very different microclimate at the ground level from that experienced in the upper canopy. Wind speeds are lower, temperatures are lower during the day (but warmer at night), and the relative humidity is much greater near the ground. The complexity of the microclimate is closely related to the complexity of structure in vegetation, and generally speaking, the more complex the structure of vegetation, the more species of animal are able to make a living there. The high plant biomass of the tropics leads to a greater spatial complexity in the environment, and this leads to a higher potential for diversity in the living things that can occupy a region. The climates of the higher latitudes are generally less favorable for the accumulation of large quantities of biomass; hence, the structure of vegetation is simpler and the animal diversity is consequently lower.

Passage

Five

学科分类

题目

自然科学-地理

Strait of Malacca

内容回忆

马六甲海峡

参考阅读

The Beringia Landscape

During the peak of the last ice age, northeast Asia (Siberia) and Alaska were connected by a broad land mass called the Bering Land Bridge. This land bridge existed because so much of Earth’s water was frozen in the great ice sheets that sea levels were over 100 meters lower than they are today. Between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago, Siberia, the Bering Land Bridge, and Alaska shared many environmental characteristics. These included a common mammalian fauna of large mammals, a common flora composed of broad grasslands as well as wind-swept dunes and tundra, and a common climate with cold, dry winters and somewhat warmer summers. The recognition that many aspects of the modern flora and fauna were present on both sides of the Bering Sea as remnants of the ice-age landscape led to this region being named Beringia.

It is through Beringia that small groups of large mammal hunters, slowly expanding their hunting territories, eventually colonized North and South America. On this archaeologists generally agree, but that is where the agreement stops. One broad area of disagreement in expanding the peopling of the Americas is the domain of paleoecologists, but it is critical to understanding human history: what was Beringia like?

The Beringian landscape was very different from what it is today. Broad, windswept valleys, glaciated mountains, sparse vegetation, and less moisture created a rather forbidding land mass. This land mass supported herds of now-extinct species of mammoth, bison, and horse and somewhat modern versions of caribou, mush ox, elk, and saiga antelope. These grazers supported in turn a number of impressive carnivores, including the giant short-faced bear, the saber-tooth cat, and a large species of lion.

The presence of mammal species that require grassland vegetation has led Arctic biologist Dale Guthrie to argue that while cold and dry, there must have been broad areas of dense vegetation to support herds of mammoth, horse, and bison. Further, nearly all of the ice-age fauna had teeth that indicate an adaptation to grasses and sedges; they could not have been supported by a modern flora of mosses and lichens. Guthrie has also demonstrated that the landscape must have been subject to intense and continuous winds, especially in winter. He makes this argument based on the anatomy of horse and bison, which do not have the ability to search for food through deep snow cover. They need landscapes with strong winds that remove the winter snows, exposing the dry grasses beneath. Guthrie applied the term “mammoth steppe” to characterize this landscape.

In contrast, Paul Colinvaux has offered a counterargument based on the analysis of pollen in lake sediments dating to the last ice age. He found that the amount of pollen recovered in these sediments is so low that the Beringian landscape during the peak of the last glaciation was more likely to have been what he termed a “polar desert,” with little or only sparse vegetation. In no way was it possible that this region could have supported large herds of mammals and thus, human hunters. Guthrie has argued against this view by pointing out that radiocarbon analysis of mammoth, horse, and bison bones from Beringian deposits revealed that the bones date to the period of most intense glaciation.

The argument seemed to be at a standstill until a number of recent studies resulted in a spectacular suite of new finds. The first was the discovery of a 1,000-square-kilometer preserved patch of Beringian vegetation dating to just over 17,000 years ago—the peak of the last ice age. The plants were preserved under a thick ash fall from a volcanic eruption. Investigations of the plants found grasses, sedges, mosses, and many other varieties in a nearly continuous cover, as was predicted by Guthrie. But this vegetation had a thin root mat with no soil formation, demonstrating that there was little long-term stability in plant cover, a finding supporting some of the arguments of Colinvaux. A mixture of continuous but thin vegetation supporting herds of large mammals is one that seems plausible and realistic with the available data.

Passage

Six

学科分类

题目

社科类-历史

19世纪美国本土文化萌芽

内容回忆

19世纪美国本土文化萌芽

参考阅读

Understanding Ancient Mesoamerican Art

Starting at the end of the eighteenth century and continuing up to the present, explorers have searched for the ruins of ancient Mesoamerica, a region that includes Central America and central and southern Mexico. With the progress of time, archaeologists have unearthed civilizations increasingly remote in age. It is as if with each new century in the modern era an earlier stratum of antiquity has been revealed. Nineteenth-century explorers, particularly John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, came upon Maya cities in the jungle, as well as evidence of other Classic cultures. Twentieth-century research revealed a much earlier high civilization, the Olmec. It now scarcely seems possible that the frontiers of early Mesoamerican civilization can be pushed back any further, although new work—such as in Oaxaca, southern Mexico—will continue to fill in details of the picture.

The process of discovery often shapes what we know about the history of

Mesoamerican art. New finds are just as often made accidentally as intentionally. In 1971 workers installing sound and light equipment under the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan stumbled upon a remarkable cave that has since been interpreted by some scholars as a royal burial chamber. Archaeology has its own fashions too: the isolation of new sites may be the prime goal in one decade and the excavation of pyramids the focus in the next. In a third decade, outlying structures rather than principal buildings may absorb archaeologists’ energies. Nor should one forget that excavators are vulnerable to local interests. At one point, reconstruction of pyramids to attract tourism may be desired; at another, archaeologists may be precluded from working at what has already become a tourist attraction. Also, modern construction often determines which ancient sites can be excavated. In Mexico City, for example, the building of the subway initiated the excavations there and renewed interest in the old Aztec capital.

But the study of Mesoamerican art is not based exclusively on archaeology. Much useful information about the native populations was written down in the sixteenth century, particularly in central Mexico, and it can help us unravel the pre-Columbian past (the time prior to the arrival of Columbus in the Americas in 1492). Although many sources exist, the single most important one to the art historian is Bernardino de Sahagún’s General History of the Things of New Spain. A Franciscan friar (member of the Roman Catholic religious order), Sahagún recorded for posterity many aspects of pre-Hispanic life in his encyclopedia of twelve books, including history, ideology, and cosmogony (theories of the origin of the universe), as well as detailed information on the materials and methods of the skilled native craft workers. Furthermore, traditional ways of life survive among the native peoples of Mesoamerica, and scholars have increasingly found that modern practice and belief can decode the past. Remarkably, some scholars have been turned this process around, teaching ancient writing to modern peoples who may use it to articulate their identity in the twenty-first century.

During the past 40 years, scholars also have made great progress in deciphering and interpreting ancient Mesoamerican writing systems, a breakthrough that has transformed our understanding of the pre-Columbian mind. Classic Maya inscriptions, for example—long thought to record only calendrical information and astrological incantations—can now be read, and we find that most of them glorify family and ancestry by displaying the right of individual sovereigns to rule. The carvings can thus be seen as portraits or public records of dynastic power. Although scholars long believed that Mesoamerican artists did not sign their works, Mayanist scholar David Stuart’s 1986 deciphering of the Maya glyphs (written symbols) for “scribe” and “to write” opened a window on Maya practice; now we know at least one painter of ceramic vessels was the son of a king. Knowledge of the minor arts has also come in large part through an active art market. Thousands more small-scale objects are known now than in the twentieth century, although at a terrible cost to the ancient ruins from which they have been plundered.

Passage

Seven

学科分类

题目

社科类-历史

Roman Route

内容回忆

罗马帝国的昌盛和它的route有很大的关系。早期会选择用马作为交通工具，主要的还是为了official服务，后来发现长距离的运输成本太高。后来选择船运，长距离比较适合，罗马帝国以及运输系统的发展，不仅仅供给了本国的基本需求，也促进了周边各国的发展。

参考阅读

Railroads and Commercial Agriculture in Nineteenth-Century United States

By 1850 the United States possessed roughly 9,000 miles of railroad track; then years later it had over 30,000 miles, more than the rest of the world combined. Much of the new construction during the 1850s occurred west of the Appalachian Mountains——over 2,000 miles in the states of Ohio and Illinois alone.

The effect of the new railroad lines rippled outward through the economy. Farmers along the tracks began to specialize in crops that they could market in distant locations. With their profits they purchased manufactured goods that earlier they might have made at home. Before the railroad reached Tennessee, the state produced about 25,000 bushels (or 640 tons) of wheat, which sold for less than 50 cents a bushel. Once the railroad came, farmers in the same counties grew 400,000 bushels (over 10,000 tons) and sold their crop at a dollar a bushel.

The new railroad networks shifted the direction of western trade. In 1840 most northwestern grain was shipped south down the Mississippi River to the bustling port of New Orleans. But low water made steamboat travel hazardous in summer, and ice shut down traffic in winter. Products such as lard, tallow, and cheese quickly spoiled if stored in New Orleans’ hot and humid warehouses. Increasingly, traffic from the Midwest flowed west to east, over the new rail lines. Chicago became the region’s hub, linking the farms of the upper Midwest to New York and other eastern cities by more than 2,000 miles of track in 1855. Thus while the value of goods shipped by river to New Orleans continued to increase, the South’s overall share of western trade dropped dramatically.

A sharp rise in demand for grain abroad also encouraged farmers in the Northeast and Midwest to become more commercially oriented. Wheat, which in 1845 commanded $1.08 a bushel in New York City, fetched $2.46 in 1855; in similar fashion the price of corn nearly doubled. Farmers responded by specializing in cash crops, borrowing to purchase more land, and investing in equipment to increase productivity.

As railroad lines fanned out from Chicago, farmers began to acquire open prairie land in Illinois and then Iowa, putting the fertile, deep black soil into production. Commercial agriculture transformed this remarkable treeless environment. To settlers accustomed to eastern woodlands, the thousands of square miles of tall grass were an awesome sight. Indian grass, Canada wild rye, and native big bluestem all grew higher than a person. Because eastern plows could not penetrate the densely tangled roots of prairie grass, the earliest settlers erected farms along the boundary separating the forest from the prairie. In 1837, however, John Deere patented a sharp-cutting steel plow that sliced through the sod without soil sticking to the blade. Cyrus McCormick refined a mechanical reaper that harvested fourteen times more wheat with the same amount of labor. By the 1850s McCormick was selling 1,000 reapers a year and could not keep up with demand, while Deere turned out 10,000 plows annually.

The new commercial farming fundamentally altered the Midwestern landscape and the environment. Native Americans had grown corn in the region for years, but never in such large fields as did later settlers who became farmers, whose surpluses were shipped east. Prairie farmers also introduced new crops that were not part of the earlier ecological system, notably wheat, along with fruits and vegetables.

Native grasses were replaced by a small number of plants cultivated as commodities. Corn had the best yields, but it was primarily used to feed livestock. Because bread played a key role in the American and European diet, wheat became the major cash crop. Tame grasses replaced native grasses in pastures for making hay.

Western farmers altered the landscape by reducing the annual fires that had kept the prairie free from trees. In the absence of these fires, trees reappeared on land not in cultivation and, if undisturbed, eventually formed woodlots. The earlier unbroken landscape gave way to independent farms, each fenced off in a precise checkerboard pattern. It was an artificial ecosystem of animals, woodlots, and crops, whose large, uniform layout made western farms more efficient than the more-irregular farms in the East.

Passage

Eight

学科分类

社科类-历史

自然科学-地质

Continental Drift

内容回忆

关于大陆漂移学说方面的学术研究和理论

参考阅读

Early Theories of Continental Drift

The idea that the past geography of Earth was different from today is not new. The earliest maps showing the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa probably provided people with the first evidence that continents may have once been joined together, then broken apart and moved to their present positions.

During the late nineteenth century, Austrian geologist Eduard Suess

noted the similarities between the Late Paleozoic plant fossils of India,

Australia, South Africa, and South America. The plant fossils comprise a

unique group of plants that occurs in coal layers just above the glacial deposits on these southern continents. In this book The Face of the Earth (1885), he proposed the name “Gondwanaland” (called Gondwana here) for a supercontinent composed of the aforementioned southern landmasses. Suess thought these southern continents were connected by land bridges over which plants and animals migrated. Thus, in his view, the similarities of fossils on these continents were due to the appearance and disappearance of the connecting land bridges.

The American geologist Frank Taylor published a pamphlet in 1910 presenting his own theory of continental drift. He explained the formation of mountain ranges as a result of the lateral movements of continents. He also envisioned the present-day continents as parts of larger polar continents that eventually broke apart and migrated toward equator after Earth’s rotation was supposedly slowed by gigantic tidal forces. According to Taylor, these tidal forces were generated when Earth’s gravity captured the Moon about 100 million years ago. Although we know that Taylor ‘s explanation of continental drift is incorrect, one of his most significant contributions was his suggestion that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge—an underwater mountain chain discovered by the 1872-1876 British HMS Challenger expeditions—might mark the site at which an ancient continent broke apart, forming the present –day Atlantic Ocean.

However, it is Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, who is generally credited with developing the hypothesis of continental drift. In his monumental book, The Origin of Continents and Oceans (1915), Wegener proposed that all landmasses were originally united into a single supercontinent that he named “Pangaea.” Wegner portrayed his grand

concept of continental movement in a series of maps showing the breakup of

Pangaea and the movement of various continents to their present-day locations. What evidence did Wegener use to support his hypothesis of continental drift? First, Wegener noted that the shorelines of continents fit

together, forming a large supercontinent and that marine, nonmarine, and

glacial rock sequences of Pennsylvanian to Jurassic ages are almost identical for all Gondwana continents, strongly indicating that they were joined together at one time. Furthermore, mountain ranges and glacial deposits seem to match up in such a way that suggests continents could have once been a single landmass. And last, many of the same extinct plant and animal groups are found today on widely separated continents, indicating that the continents must have been in proximity at one time. Wegener argued that this vast amount of evidence from a variety of sources surely indicated the continents must have been close together at one time in the past.

Alexander Du Toit, a South African geologist was one of Wegener’s ardent supporters. He noted that fossils of the Permian freshwater reptile “Mesosaurus” occur in rocks of the same age in both Brazil and South Africa. Because the physiology of freshwater and marine animals is completely different, it is hard to imagine how a freshwater reptile could have swum across the Atlantic Ocean and then found a freshwater environment nearly identical to its former habitat. Furthermore, if Mesosaurus could have swum across the ocean, its fossil remains should occur in other localities besides Brazil and South Africa. It is more logical to assume that Mesosaurus lived in lakes in what are now adjacent areas of South America and Africa but were then united in a single continent.

Despite what seemed to be overwhelming evidence presented Wegener

and later Du Toit and others, most geologists at the time refused to entertain the idea that the continents might have moved in the past

                                              综合点评

3月7日为线下考试，考生普遍反映此次听力难度适中，包含部分旧题，大家不能忽视练习

                         Conversation1

话题分类

生活场景

内容回忆

学生问图书馆管理员找书

                         Conversation2

话题分类

学术场景

内容回忆

学生在报纸上找到一篇文章问教授是否可以当pre的主题

conversation 3

话题分类

生活场景

内容回忆

一个学生想换专业并且参加French group

                               Lecture1

话题分类

化学

内容回忆

金属材料和新合成材料

                               Lecture2

话题分类

生物

内容回忆

发光细菌

                               Lecture3

话题分类

艺术史

内容回忆

关于jewel的art history

                              Lecture4

话题分类

动物

内容回忆

小鸟为什么有begging的behavior

Lecture5

话题分类

音乐

内容回忆

Bach的音乐如何不被人们淡忘，有几个人通过不同方式让它流传下去

Task 1

内容回忆

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: It's difficult for people today to save money than their grandparents when they were young?

参考答案

Nowadays it’s hard for people to save money and I think that’s because of the widespread use of the Internet and online shopping has become more and more convenient. As a result, people would spend a lot of time staying at home and going shopping on the Internet. So they can just stay at home and choose the staff they want to buy from different online stores. And after they pay the money on the Internet, they can just wait for the package at home. So I think the simple solution is to go outside and play with their friends instead of staying at home and buying things.

Task 2

阅读

Professor should provide notes for classes

好处1：学生上课可以听讲更专心，不用花时间记笔记

好处2：学生可以更好地备考

听力

反对

好处1：学生上课可以听讲更专心，不用花时间记笔记

好处2：学生可以更好地备考

Task 3

阅读

有故事的广告更有说服力

听力

例子：模拟运动鞋广告，一组是直接推销鞋的有点，另一组是放了一个故事性的广告，结果是第二组更能吸引人，让人产生对产品的兴趣。

Task 4

话题

修dams的两个坏处

听力

坏处1：影响一些生物的life cycle

坏处2：会减少一些动物的栖息地

综合点评

这次托福考试写作部分整体难度中等偏上。

其中，综合写作考查动物类（bonobo倭黑猩猩与chimpanzee黑猩猩的对比），难度适中。

但是，独立写作考查偏难，重复考查2018年12月15日的中国大陆考区题目。

综合写作

话题分类

动物类（讨论某种灵长目动物bonobo---产于非洲刚果河以南的倭黑猩猩与chimpanzee---黑猩猩对比，哪个种类更aggressive？）

考题回忆

总论点

bonobo性格比较温和，不像chimpanzee那么的aggressive

阅读部分

分论点一：科学家们观察关进笼子中的两种猩猩，发现bonobo更加老实(less aggressive);

分论点二：bonobo族群里面存在社会法则(the social law)旨在维护bonobo幼崽，所以成年bonobo不能够threaten bonobo幼崽；

分论点三：chimpanzee会hunt其他生物的肉来吃，但是bonobo不会这么做。Bonobo是素食的，只吃nut and plants。

听力部分

分论点一：在实验室中的动物不会behave like what they do in the  wild;

分论点二：bonobo族群里也有欺凌弱小的现象；而这个现象只发生 在研究者不在的时候，即当researchers都去观察chimpanzee的时候；

分论点三：chimpanzee吃其他的动物是因为human behavior影响到 了他们的素食来源，迫使他们去猎杀别的动物。并且如果有一天当人类也影响到bonobo的habitat，bonobo也会猎杀别的动物。

解题思路

1. 确定听力材料与阅读文章的关系（反驳）

2. 灵活使用写作模板，点对点进行比较

3. 注意动词时态（可能以过去时为主）

参考范文

范文:

While both the reading passage and the lecture discuss the same topic about the possible characteristics of the bonobo and the chimpanzee, the lecturer challenges the three theories presented in the reading. (30 words)

First, the reading states scientists found the bonobo was less aggressive than the chimpanzee based on an observation of these two types of animals after they were confined into the cages. The professor, however, refutes this explanation, claiming all the animals as the research subjects in the laboratory would not behave like what they did in the wild. (52 words)

Second, the reading passage shows that there was the social law in the group of the bonobo aiming at protecting its offspring. Therefore, an adult bonobo was not allowed to threaten its cubs. In contrast, the lecturer contends the bully also occurred in the bonobo group and this phenomenon only happened in the moment when researchers were absent from observing the bonobo, in other words, when they all chose to watch the chimpanzee. (65 words)

Finally, though the reading says the chimpanzee would hunt for other creatures as food but bonobo would not because it was a vegetarian. The professor, however, argues against this view by mentioning the chimpanzee ate other creatures because human behavior could have a negative impact on the source of the vegetarian diet, pushing them to kill other animals. And if one day human beings have a negative influence on the bonobo’s habitat, bonobo would also hunt for other animals as food. (73 words)

(220 words)

独立写作

话题分类

社会类（工作或学业取得成功）

考题回忆

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: In order to succeed in school or work, having the ability to adapt or adjust to changing conditions or circumstances is more important than having excellent knowledge of a job or a field of study.

解题思路

写作思路：

要点：这道题目讨论工作或学业上获得成功的路径，比较抽象，建议采取如下答题思路：这道题目的核心点是：对于成功，人们有不同的理解与定义，比如成功可以是大学毕业生找到一份体面的工作，成功也可以是学生在学校考试取得好成绩，成功还可以是员工实现升职加薪，成功也许是学生得到学校老师的表扬和同学的赞赏，成功还可能是人拥有强的社交能力且拥有很多知心朋友。因为每个人对于成功的理解不一样，所以在不同获得成功的场景下，到底是适应环境变化更重要还是知识更重要，需要分情况讨论。

         观点：

         模式一

         总论点：同意适应调整能力比知识更重要

         分论点一 ：适应环境才能让人们更主动的运用知识来完成工作任务；

         分论点二： 适应环境才能让人们更好的使用知识价值并进行创新改革；

         分论点三：适应环境才能更好的展示才能，获得资源、政策支持、维护良好人际关系。

         模式二

         总论点：不同意适应调整能力比知识更重要

         分论点一：知识更能够帮助人们完成工作任务；

         分论点二：知识更能够帮助人们工作中获得支持；

         分论点三：知识更能够帮助人们创新。

参考范文

范文：

Success plays a significant role in everyone’s life and individuals are in pursuit of making success. Nevertheless, the job or study conditions change continuously, which may restrict people’s ability to be productive. As a result, some people claim that it is indispensable for them to develop the ability of adapting or adjusting to the new circumstance, which prepares for their success. However, in my opinion, knowledge plays a more important part in the path of individuals’ success. (77 words)

First, it is much more possible for individuals to complete their tasks effectively with knowledge. When conditions change in a subject of study, for instance, the ability to adapt to the changing circumstances solely will probably make people abandon their dreams. Yet, knowledge can enable individuals to find the solutions. A good example is that a test pf the English Language Proficiency used to merely require students to answer several multiple-choices questions in the reading and listening section. However, it also asks candidates to write an essay now. Students who are not afraid of this reform can get used to the new test format easily, but this will not help them get a high score in the test. By contrast, students with abundant knowledge are more able to present a high-quality essay in the test, so that they could get an ideal result. (143 words)

Second, people with knowledge can get more support from their colleagues. It is common that when people hope to be selected for a leader in the company or in the class, they need to gain support from their co-workers or classmates. Being knowledgeable can help them win more support because individuals usually admire leaders who know so many things and admiration can turn into friendship or bond. And this relationship can change into votes, since people tend to vote for the ones whom they feel they are familiar with. In addition, knowledgeable people give others a feeling that they are reliant, they could get things done, and they have problem-solving skills. Considering these personalities, others would love to hand over power to this type of people. (126 words)

Further, knowledgeable people, or intellectuals, are often more creative. Working or studying in the conventional way cannot always guarantee success. People, especially managers, need to innovate with the purpose of keeping the company prosperous. Although adapting to the new conditions or the new circumstances can push people to solve new problems, they tend to overlook innovation, which means if the conditions keep stable for a period, the company will not be able to make more accomplishment in those years. And in the contemporary competitive business market, this company would fall behind immediately. However, individuals with knowledge are able to make innovations constantly since they are capable of thinking critically, which will enable them and the company to be successful. (119 words)

In conclusion, knowledge can help people to finish tasks better, gain more support and be more creative, knowledge plays a much more essential role in people’s success. (27 words)

(492 words)