综合点评

本场考试整体难度适中，只有一篇相对难了些，整体来讲今天的阅读考题对考生们比较友好；词汇题考频较高，个别单词有一点生僻，但是对于词汇量积累足够的考生们来说也并不是大的障碍点。

Passage one

学科分类

题目

艺术类

印象派艺术的发展

内容回忆

印象艺术，相机发明是人民越来越精确地画画，接下来讲了一个环绕死海的人，将印象主义发扬。

参考阅读

Navajo Art

The Navajo, a Native American people living in the southwestern United States, live in small scattered settlements. In many respects, such as education, occupation, and leisure activities, their life is like that of other groups that contribute to the diverse social fabric of North American culture in the twenty-first century. At the same time, they have retained some traditional cultural practices that are associated with particular art forms. For example, the most important traditional Navajo rituals include the production of large floor paintings. These are actually made by pouring thin, finely controlled streams of colored sands or pulverized vegetable and mineral substances, pollen, and flowers in precise patterns on the ground. The largest of these paintings may be up to 5.5 meters in diameter and cover the entire floor of a room. Working from the inside of the design outward, the Navajo artist and his assistants will sift the black, white, bluish-gray, orange, and red materials through their fingers to create the finely detailed imagery. ■ The paintings and chants used in the ceremonies are directed by well-trained artists and singers who enlist the aid of spirits who are impersonated by masked performers. ■ The twenty-four known Navajo chants can be represented by up to 500 sand paintings. ■These complex paintings serve as memory aids to guide the singers during the performance of the ritual songs, which can last up to nine days.■

The purpose and meaning of the sand paintings can be explained by examining one of the most basic ideals of Navajo society, embodied in their word hozho (beauty or harmony, goodness, and happiness). It coexists with hochxo ("ugliness," or "evil," and "disorder") in a world where opposing forces of dynamism and stability create constant change. When the world, which was created in beauty, becomes ugly and disorderly, the Navajo gather to perform rituals with songs and make sand paintings to restore beauty and harmony to the world. Some illness is itself regarded as a type of disharmony. Thus, the restoration of harmony through a ceremony can be part of a curing process.

Men make sand paintings that are accurate copies of paintings from the past. The songs sung over the paintings are also faithful renditions of songs from the past. By recreating these arts, which reflect the original beauty of creation, the Navajo bring beauty to the present world. As relative newcomers to the Southwest, a place where their climate, neighbors, and rulers could be equally inhospitable, the Navajo created these art forms to affect the world around them, not just through the recounting of the actions symbolized, but through the beauty and harmony of the artworks themselves. The paintings generally illustrate ideas and events from the life of a mythical hero, who, after being healed by the gods, gave gifts of songs and paintings. Working from memory, the artists re-create the traditional form of the image as accurately as possible.

The Navajo are also world-famous for the designs on their woven blankets. Navajo women own the family flocks, control the shearing of the sheep, the carding, the spinning, and dying of the thread, and the weaving of the fabrics. While the men who make faithful copies of sand paintings from the past represent the principle of stability in Navajo thought, women embody dynamism and create new designs for every weaving they make. Weaving is a paradigm of the creativity of a mythic ancestor named Spider, woman who wove the universe as a cosmic web that united earth and sky. It was she who, according to legend, taught Navajo women how to weave. As they prepare their materials and weave, Navajo women imitate the transformations that originally created the world.

Working on their looms, Navajo weavers create images through which they experience harmony with nature. It is their means of creating beauty and thereby contributing to the beauty, harmony, and healing of the world. Thus, weaving is a way of seeing the world and being part of it.

Passage two

学科分类

题目

教育类

international mentor program

内容回忆

一个international mentor program的好处

参考阅读

Reflection in Teaching

Teachers, it is thought, benefit from the practice of reflection, the conscious act of thinking deeply about and carefully examining the interactions and events within their own classrooms. Educators T. Wildman and J. Niles (1987) describe a scheme for developing reflective practice in experienced teachers. This was justified by the view that reflective practice could help teachers to feel more intellectually involved in their role and work in teaching and enable them to cope with the paucity of scientific fact and the uncertainty of knowledge in the discipline of teaching.

Wildman and Niles were particularly interested in investigating the conditions under which reflection might flourish–a subject on which there is little guidance in the literature. They designed an experimental strategy for a group of teachers in Virginia and worked with 40 practicing teachers over several years. They were concerned that many would be “drawn to these new, refreshing”conceptions of teaching only to find that the void between the abstractions and the realities of teacher reflection is too great to bridge. Reflection on a complex task such as teaching is not easy.”The teachers were taken through a program of talking about teaching events, moving on to reflecting about specific issues in a supported, and later an independent, manner.

Wildman and Niles observed that systematic reflection on teaching required a sound ability to understand classroom events in an objective manner. They describe the initial understanding in the teachers with whom they were working as being “utilitarian …and not rich or detailed enough to drive systematic reflection.”Teachers rarely have the time or opportunities to view their own or the teaching of others in an objective manner. Further observation revealed the tendency of teachers to evaluate events rather than review the contributory factors in a considered manner by, in effect, standing outside the situation.

Helping this group of teachers to revise their thinking about classroom events became central. This process took time and patience and effective trainers. The researchers estimate that the initial training of the teachers to view events objectively took between 20 and 30 hours, with the same number of hours again being required to practice the skills of reflection.

Wildman and Niles identify three principles that facilitate reflective practice in a teaching situation. The first is support from administrators in an education system, enabling teachers to understand the requirements of reflective practice and how it relates to teaching students. The second is the availability of sufficient time and space. The teachers in the program described how they found it difficult to put aside the immediate demands of others in order to give themselves the time they needed to develop their reflective skills. The third is the development of a collaborative environment with support from other teachers. Support and encouragement were also required to help teachers in the program cope with aspects of their professional life with which they were not comfortable. Wildman and Niles make a summary comment: “Perhaps the most important thing we learned is the idea of the teacher-as-reflective-practitioner will not happen simply because it is a good or even compelling idea.”

The work of Wildman and Niles suggests the importance of recognizing some of the difficulties of instituting reflective practice. Others have noted this, making a similar point about the teaching profession’s cultural inhibitions about reflective practice. Zeichner and Liston (1987) point out the inconsistency between the role of the teacher as a (reflective) professional decision maker and the more usual role of the teacher as a technician, putting into practice the ideas of theirs. More basic than the cultural issues is the matter of motivation. Becoming a reflective practitioner requires extra work (Jaworski, 1993) and has only vaguely defined goals with, perhaps, little initially perceivable reward and the threat of vulnerability. Few have directly questioned what might lead a teacher to want to become reflective. Apparently, the most obvious reason for teachers to work toward reflective practice is that teacher educators think it is a good thing. There appear to be many unexplored matters about the motivation to reflect –for example, the value of externally motivated reflection as opposed to that of teachers who might reflect by habit.

Passage three

学科分类

题目

经济

英国在18世纪高速发展的原因

内容回忆

一个英国在十八世纪高速发展的原因

参考阅读

The Commercial Revolution in Medieval Europe

Beginning in the 1160s, the opening of new silver mines in northern Europe led to the minting and circulation of vast quantities of silver coins. The widespread use of cash greatly increased the volume of international trade. Business procedures changed radically. The individual traveling merchant who alone handled virtually all aspects of exchange evolved into an operation invoh/ing three separate types of merchants: the sedentary merchant who ran the "home office," financing and organizing the firm’s entire export-import trade; the carriers who transported goods by land and sea; and the company agents resident in cities abroad who, on the advice of the home office, looked after sales and procurements.

Commercial correspondence, unnecessary when one businessperson oversaw everything and made direct bargains with buyers and sellers, multiplied. Regular courier service among commercial cities began. Commercial accounting became more complex when firms had to deal with shareholders, manufacturers, customers, branch offices, employees, and competing firms. Tolls on roads became high enough to finance what has been called a road revolution, involving new surfaces and bridges, new passes through the Alps, and new inns and hospices for travelers. The growth of mutual trust among merchants facilitated the growth of sales on credit and led to new developments in finance, such as the bill of exchange, a device that made the long, slow, and very dangerous shipment of coins unnecessary.

The ventures of the German Hanseatic League illustrate these advancements. The Hanseatic League was a mercantile association of European towns dating from 1159. ■The league grew by the end of the fourteenth century to include about 200 cities from Holland to Poland. ■Across regular, well- defined trade routes along the Baltic and North seas, the ships of league cities carried furs, wax, copper, fish, grain, timber, and wine. ■These goods were exchanged for finished products, mainly cloth and salt, from western cities. ■At cities such as Bruges and London, Hanseatic merchants secured special trading concessions, exempting them from all tolls and allowing them to trade at local fairs. Hanseatic merchants established foreign trading centers, the most famous of which was the London Steelyard, a walled community with warehouses, offices, a church, and residential quarters for company representatives. By the late thirteenth century, Hanseatic merchants had developed an important business technique, the business register. Merchants publicly recorded their debts and contracts and received a league guarantee for them. This device proved a decisive factor in the later development of credit and commerce in northern Europe.

These developments added up to what one modern scholar has called "a commercial revolution." In the long run, the commercial revolution of the High Middle Ages (A D 1000-1300) brought about radical change in European society. One remarkable aspect of this change was that the commercial classes constituted a small part of the total population—never more than 10 percent. They exercised an influence far in excess of their numbers. The commercial revolution created a great deal of new wealth, which meant a higher standard of living. The existence of wealth did not escape the attention of kings and other rulers. Wealth could be taxed, and through taxation, kings could create strong and centralized states. In the years to come, alliances with the middle classes were to enable kings to weaken aristocratic interests and build the states that came to be called modern.

The commercial revolution also provided the opportunity for thousands of agricultural workers to improve their social position. The slow but steady transformation of European society from almost completely rural and isolated to relatively more urban constituted the greatest effect of the commercial revolution that began in the eleventh century. Even so, merchants and business people did not run medieval communities, except in central and northern Italy and in the county of Flanders. Most towns remained small. The nobility and churchmen determined the predominant social attitudes, values, and patterns of thought and behavior. The commercial changes of the eleventh through fourteenth centuries did however, lay the economic foundation for the development of urban life and culture.

Passage four

学科分类

题目

生物-环境

大陆板块运动和生物多样性

内容回忆

大陆板块地壳运动导致生物多样性

参考阅读

Speciation in Geographically Isolated Populations

Evolutionary biologists believe that speciation, the formation of a new species, often begins when some kind of physical barrier arises and divides a population of a single species into separate subpopulations. Physical separation between subpopulations promotes the formation of new species because once the members of one subpopulation can no longer mate with members of another subpopulation, they cannot exchange variant genes that arise in one of the subpopulations. In the absence of gene flow between the subpopulations, genetic differences between the groups begin to accumulate. Eventually the subpopulations become so genetically distinct that they cannot interbreed even if the physical barriers between them were removed. At this point the subpopulations have evolved into distinct species. This route to speciation is known as allopatry (“allo-” means “different”, and “patria” means “homeland”).

Allopatric speciation may be the main speciation route. This should not be surprising, since allopatry is pretty common. In general, the subpopulations of most species are separated from each other by some measurable distance. So even under normal situations the gene flow among the subpopulations is more of an intermittent trickle than a steady stream. In addition, barriers can rapidly arise and shut off the trickle. For example, in the 1800s a monstrous earthquake changed the course of the Mississippi River, a large river flowing in the central part of the United States of America. The change separated populations of insects now living along opposite shore, completely cutting off gene flow between them.

Geographic isolation also can proceed slowly, over great spans of time. We find evidence of such extended events in the fossil record, which affords glimpses into the breakup of formerly continuous environments. For example, during past ice ages, glaciers advanced down through North America and Europe and gradually cut off parts of populations from one another. When the glaciers retreated, the separated populations of plants and animals came into contact again. Some groups that had descended from the same parent population were no longer reproductively compatible— they had evolved into separate species. In other groups, however, genetic divergences had not proceeded so far, and the descendants could still interbreed— for them, reproductive isolation was not completed, and so speciation had not occurred.

Allopatric speciation can also be brought by the imperceptibly slow but colossal movements of the tectonic plates that make up Earth’s surface. About 5 million years ago such geologic movements created the land bridge between North America and South America that we call the Isthmus of Panama. The formation of the isthmus had important consequences for global patterns of ocean water flow. While previously the gap between the continents had allowed a free flow of water, now the isthmus presented a barrier that divided the Atlantic Ocean from the Pacific Ocean. This division set the stage for allopatric speciation among populations of fishes and other marine species.

In the 1980s, John Graves studied two populations of closely related fishes, one population from the Atlantic side of isthmus, the other from the Pacific side. He compared four enzymes found in the muscles of each population. Graves found that all four Pacific enzymes function better at lower temperatures than the four Atlantic versions of the same enzymes. This is significant because Pacific seawater is typically 2 to 3 degrees cooler than seawater on the Atlantic side of isthmus. Analysis by gel electrophoresis revealed slight differences in amino acid sequence of the enzymes of two of the four pairs. This is significant because the amino acid sequence of an enzyme is determined by genes.

Graves drew two conclusions from these observations. First, at least some of the observed differences between the enzymes of the Atlantic and Pacific fish populations were not random but were the result of evolutionary adaptation. Second, it appears that closely related populations of fishes on both sides of the isthmus are starting to genetically diverge from each other. Because Graves’s study of geographically isolated populations of isthmus fishes offers a glimpse of the beginning of a process of gradual accumulation of mutations that are neutral or adaptive, divergences here might be evidence of allopatric speciation in process.

综合点评

听力考试还是有一定难度的

Conversation 1

话题分类

考古

内容回忆

考古类话题

Conversation 2

话题分类

工作

内容回忆

关于暑期工作

Conversation 3

话题分类

作业

内容回忆

学生和老师讨论自己的作业安排

Lecture 1

话题分类

生物

内容回忆

沙漠里的生物如何缺水的问题

Lecture 2

话题分类

心理学

内容回忆

音乐与人体大脑区域的关联、影响

Lecture 3

话题分类

考古学

内容回忆

在高海拔、高寒山洞发现了人类活动遗迹

Lecture 4

话题分类

生物学

内容回忆

PCB不一定降低了虎鲸的生育能力，因为fish中的PCB含量要比larger prey的低，但是吃larger prey的orca的reproduce能力却没有下降听力分贝

Task 1

内容回忆

是否应该鼓励学生们上课讨论？

参考答案

I strongly agree with this statement.

First, class discussions increase students' interests and engagement – lectures mixed with discussions can help maintain students' focus. As they discuss their answers, they get different perspectives on the topic. Good questions and answers can get students to think deeply and make connections

Also, participating in class discussion can be used to develop important speaking skills. In many professional contexts, people need to be able to speak up in a group. They may need to offer information, ask questions, or argue for a different solution. And it’s one of those skills that develops better with feedback.

Task 2

阅读

关于international mentor program。好处1：是可以帮学生更好的解决一些daily stuff，例如开银行账户这种；好处2：培养relationships。

听力

听力中的男生表示赞同，他之前去意大利交流，遇到了一些daily stuff很麻烦；交换结束后，一个学期都没怎么见过意大利人，有这个program可以帮他了解文化和提升语言之类的

Task 3

阅读

心理学/商业主题，operational transparency，就是让消费者了解一下操作细节，

听力

例子是厨房做饭如果cooking area被隔开 ，消费者看不到做饭过程就只是吃食物了。但如果消费者可以看到他们做饭过程，像切菜这类的，当菜放到他们面前他们会很惊喜而且吃起来更开心，所以这是个好的方法。

Task 4

听力

酸对海洋的影响

综合点评

这次托福考试写作部分整体难度不大。其中，综合写作考查动物环境类话题，是考频高的话题，稍微词汇上有点难度。

但是，独立写作话题比较简单，3选1题型本身解题难度也不大。

综合写作

话题分类

生物环境类

考题回忆

总论点

阅读部分

阅读说了造成虎鲸下降的三个原因

1. 污染形成的PCB堆积 inhibiting reproduce，因为这类虎鲸吃salmon

2. 观赏鲸鱼的船越来越多，引擎的声音让他们不能echolocation

3. bacterial infection

听力部分

解题思路

参考范文

独立写作

话题分类

政府类-三选一题型

考题回忆

【三选一】Which groups of people need and deserve the government’s financial help?

-young people’s family with children

-the people do not have a job

-the elders aged over 70 without any job

解题思路

政府职能的常规话题

3选1 的话题常用的解题方式就是支持一个反对其他两个。这里我选择了按照重要性排序

政府首先选择支持70岁以上没有工作的老年人。

其次如果政府还有钱去支持年轻有孩子的家庭。

去选择支持那些没有工作的人

参考范文

In most societies, even in developed nations, there are some people who live under the poverty line, such as young parents, jobless people, and those over 70 without a job. Therefore, I think it is the government’s responsibility to subsidize their living costs. Of the three groups, I argue that the elderly deserve priority, then young parents and finally jobless people.

First and foremost, the reason why those older than 70 and jobless deserve support first from the government is that they simply have no other avenues to earn a living. If the government does not help them, they cannot afford basic needs with the increasing cost of living. For example, Chinese government provides a small amount of money to every elderly Chinese who is more than seventy years old on a monthly basis in order to improve their living quality. In addition, the elderly have made a great contribution to the society when they were young, so they deserve more care from the government when they grow old. I think this is a universal norm that everyone should agree with.

After meeting the requirement of subsidizing the elders, it should also aid the young couple’s family with children. This is because young couples with entry level jobs are not well paid and a child would put more financial strain on them. If the government can offer them financial aid, the young couple would be grateful. Not only would it inspire them to devote themselves to society, but also their children would have more resources for education and nutrition.

Finally, jobless people should be given aid last. Those without a job often have a high orientation for their ideal jobs, which does not mean they cannot find work to make a living. Therefore，I think the government should not pay for this. Moreover, these people must have some sort of other financial backups, otherwise they would not allow them to lose their job. In China, for instance, unemployed workers have financial insurance to cover them, so they do not need government support if they just get unemployed temporarily.

To sum up, I am convinced that the government should subsidize aged people first and then young people’s family because they are vulnerable groups in the society. If the government has more financial resources, offering temporary aid for jobless people is understandable.