综合点评

本次阅读整体难度适中，文章题材涉及到生物、人文、天文学以及现代科学。不同学科词汇掌握比较牢固、解题技巧能够熟练运用的考生可以取得不错的分数。

Passage

one

学科分类

题目

现代科学

海陆空运动的消耗能量

内容回忆

暂无

参考阅读

Powering the Industrial Revolution

In Britain one of the most dramatic changes of the Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of power. Until the reign of George Ⅲ(1760-1820), available sources of power for work and travel had not increased since the Middle Ages. There were three sources of power: animal or human muscles; the wind, operating on sail or windmill; and running water. Only the last of these was suited at all to the continuous operating of machines, and although waterpower abounded in Lancashire and Scotland and ran grain mills as well as textile mills, it had one great disadvantage: streams flowed where nature intended them to, and water-driven factories had to be located on their banks whether or not the location was desirable for other reasons. Furthermore, even the most reliable waterpower varied with the seasons and disappeared in a drought. The new age of machinery, in short, could not have been born without a new source of both movable and constant power.

The source had long been known but not exploited. Early in the eighteenth century, a pump had come into use in which expanding steam raised a piston in a cylinder, and atmospheric pressure brought it down again when the steam condensed inside the cylinder to form a vacuum. This “atmospheric engine,”invented by Thomas Savery and vastly improved by his partner, Thomas Newcomen, embodied revolutionary principles, but it was so slow and wasteful of fuel that it could not be employed outside the coal mines for which it had been designed. In the 1760s, James Watt perfected a separate condenser for the steam, so that the cylinder did not have to be cooled at every stroke; then he devised a way to make the piston turn a wheel and thus convert reciprocating (back and forth) motion into rotary motion. He thereby transformed an inefficient pump of limited use into a steam engine of a thousand uses. The final step came when steam was introduced into the cylinder to drive the piston backward as well as forward, thereby increasing the speed of the engine and cutting its fuel consumption.

Watt's steam engine soon showed what it could do. It liberated industry from dependence on running water. The engine eliminated water in the mines by driving efficient pumps, which made possible deeper and deeper mining. The ready availability of coal inspired William Murdoch during the 1790s to develop the first new form of nighttime illumination to be discovered in a millennium and a half. Coal gas rivaled smoky oil lamps and flickering candles, and early in the new century, well-to-do Londoners grew accustomed to gaslit houses and even streets. Iron manufacturers, which had starved for fuel while depending on charcoal, also benefited from ever-increasing supplies of coal: blast furnaces with steam-powered bellows turned out more iron and steel for the new machinery. Steam became the motive force of the Industrial Revolution as coal and iron ore were the raw materials.

By 1800 more than a thousand steam engines were in use in the British Isles, and Britain retained a virtual monopoly on steam engine production until the 1830s. Steam power did not merely spin cotton and roll iron; early in the new century, it also multiplied ten times over the amount of paper that a single worker could produce in a day. At the same time, operators of the first printing presses run by steam rather than by hand found it possible to produce a thousand pages in an hour rather than thirty. Steam also promised to eliminate a transportation problem not fully solved by either canal boats or turnpikes. Boats could carry heavy weights, but canals could not cross hilly terrain; turnpikes could cross the hills, but the roadbeds could not stand up under   great weights. These problems needed still another solution, and the ingredients for it lay close at hand. In some industrial regions, heavily laden wagons, with flanged wheels, were being hauled by horses along metal rails; and the stationary steam engine was puffing in the factory and mine. Another generation passed before inventors succeeded in combining these ingredients, by putting the engine on wheels and the wheels on the rails, so as to provide a machine to take the place of the horse. Thus the railroad age sprang from what had already happened in the eighteenth century.

Passage

two

学科分类

题目

社会历史学

欧洲饥荒

内容回忆

暂无

参考阅读

Colonizing the Americas via the Northwest Coast

It has long been accepted that the Americas were colonized by a migration of peoples from Asia, slowly traveling across a land bridge called Beringia (now the Bering Strait between northeastern Asia and Alaska) during the last Ice Age. The first water craft theory about this migration was that around 11,000-12,000 years ago there was an ice-free corridor stretching from eastern Beringia to the areas of North America south of the great northern glaciers. It was this midcontinental corridor between two massive ice sheets–the Laurentide to the east and the Cordilleran to the west–that enabled the southward migration. But belief in this ice-free corridor began to crumble when paleo-ecologist Glen MacDonald demonstrated that some of the most important radiocarbon dates used to support the existence of an ice-free corridor were incorrect. He persuasively argued that such an ice-free corridor did not exist until much later, when the continental ice began its final retreat.

Support is growing for the alternative theory that people using watercraft, possibly skin boats, moved southward from Beringia along the Gulf of Alaska and then southward along the Northwest coast of North America possibly as early as 16,000 years ago. This route would have enabled humans to enter southern areas of the Americas prior to the melting of the continental glaciers. Until the early 1970s,most archaeologists did not consider the coast a possible migration route into the Americas because geologists originally believed that during the last Ice Age the entire Northwest Coast was covered by glacial ice. It had been assumed that the ice extended westward from the Alaskan/Canadian mountains to the very edge of the continental shelf, the flat, submerged part of the continent that extends into the ocean. This would have created a barrier of ice extending from the Alaska Peninsula, through the Gulf of Alaska and southward along the Northwest Coast of north America to what is today the state of Washington.

The most influential proponent of the coastal migration route has been Canadian archaeologist Knut Fladmark. He theorized that with the use of watercraft, people gradually colonized unglaciated refuges and areas along the continental shelf exposed by the lower sea level. Fladmark’s hypothesis received additional support form from the fact that the greatest diversity in native American languages occurs along the west coast of the Americas, suggesting that this region has been settled the longest.

More recent geologic studies documented deglaciation and the existence of ice-free areas throughout major coastal areas of British Columbia, Canada, by 13,000 years ago. Research now indicates that sizable areas of   southeastern Alaska along the inner continental shelf were not covered by ice toward the end of the last Ice Age. One study suggests that except for a 250-mile coastal area between southwestern British Columbia and Washington State, the Northwest Coast of North America was largely free of ice by approximately 16,000 years ago. Vast areas along the coast may have been deglaciated beginning around 16,000 years ago, possibly providing a coastal corridor for the movement of plants, animals, and humans sometime between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago.

The coastal hypothesis has gained increasing support in recent years because the remains of large land animals, such as caribou and brown bears, have been found in southeastern Alaska dating between 10,000 and 12,500 years ago. This is the time period in which most scientists formerly believed the area to be inhospitable for humans. It has been suggested that if the environment were capable of supporting breeding populations of bears, there would have been enough food resources to support humans. Fladmark and other believe that the first human colonization of America occurred by boat along the Northwest Coast during the very late Ice Age, possibly as early as 14,000 years ago. The most recent geologic evidence indicates that it may have been possible for people to colonize ice-free regions along the continental shelf that were still exposed by the lower sea level between13,000 and 14,000 years ago.

The coastal hypothesis suggests an economy based on marine mammal hunting, saltwater fishing, shellfish gathering, and the use of watercraft. Because of the barrier of ice to the east, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and populated areas to the north, there may have been a greater impetus for people to move in a southerly direction.

Passage Three

学科分类

题目

生物类

鸟类选择栖息地

内容回忆

暂无

参考阅读

Begging by Nestlings

Many signals that animals make seem to impose on the signalers costs that are overly damaging. A classic example is noisy begging by nestling songbirds when a parent returns to the nest with food. These loud cheeps and peeps might give the location of the nest away to a listening hawk or raccoon, resulting in the death of the defenseless nestlings. In fact, when tapes of begging tree swallows were played at an artificial swallow nest containing an egg, the egg in that “noisy” nest was taken or destroyed by predators before the egg in a nearby quiet nest in 29 of 37 trials.

Further evidence for the costs of begging comes from a study of differences in the begging calls of warbler species that nest on the ground versus those that nest in the relative safety of trees. The young of ground-nesting warblers produce begging cheeps of higher frequencies than do their tree-nesting relatives. These higher-frequency sounds do not travel as far, and so may better conceal the individuals producing them, who are especially vulnerable to predators in their ground nests. David Haskell created artificial nests with clay eggs and placed them on the ground beside a tape recorder that played the begging calls of either tree-nesting or of ground-nesting warblers. The eggs “advertised”by the tree-nesters' begging calls were found bitten significantly more often than the eggs associated with the ground-nesters' calls.

The hypothesis that begging calls have evolved properties that reduce their potential for attracting predators yields a prediction: baby birds of species that experience high rates of nest predation should produce softer begging signals of higher frequency than nestlings of other species less often victimized by nest predators. This prediction was supported by data collected in one survey of 24 species from an Arizona forest, more evidence that predator pressure favors the evolution of begging calls that are hard to detect and pinpoint.

Given that predators can make it costly to beg for food, what benefit do begging nestlings derive from their communications? One possibility is that a noisy baby bird provides accurate signals of its real hunger and good health, making it worthwhile for the listening parent to give it food in a nest where several other offspring are usually available to be fed. If this hypothesis is true, then it follows that nestlings should adjust the intensity of their signals in relation to the signals produced by their nestmates, who are competing for parental attention. When experimentally deprived baby robins are placed in a nest with normally fed siblings, the hungry nestlings beg more loudly than usual—but so do their better-fed siblings, though not as loudly as the hungrier birds.

If parent birds use begging intensity to direct food to healthy offspring capable of vigorous begging, then parents should make food delivery decisions on the basis of their offsprings’calls. Indeed, if you take baby tree swallows out of a nest for an hour feeding half the set and starving the other half, when the birds are replaced in the nest, the starved youngsters beg more loudly than the fed birds, and the parent birds feed the active beggars more than those who beg less vigorously.

As these experiments show, begging apparently provides a signal of need that parents use to make judgments about which offspring can benefit most from a feeding. But the question arises, why don't nestlings beg loudly when they aren't all that hungry? By doing so, they could possibly secure more food, which should result in more rapid growth or larger size, either of which is advantageous. The answer lies apparently not in the increased energy costs of exaggerated begging—such energy costs are small relative to the potential gain in calories—but rather in the damage that any successful cheater would do to its siblings, which share genes with one another. An individual's success in propagating his or her genes can be affected by more than just his or her own personal reproductive success. Because close relatives have many of the same genes, animals that harm their close relatives may in effect be destroying some of their own genes. Therefore, a begging nestling that secures food at the expense of its siblings might actually leave behind fewer copies of its genes overall than it might otherwise.

Passage Four

学科分类

题目

天文学

小行星带

内容回忆

暂无

参考阅读

Planets in Our Solar System

The Sun is the hub of a huge rotating system consisting of nine planets, their satellites, and numerous small bodies, including asteroids, comets, and meteoroids. An estimated 99.85 percent of the mass of our solar system is contained within the Sun, while the planets collectively make up most of the remaining 0.15 percent. The planets, in order of their distance from the Sun, are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Under the control of the Sun's gravitational force, each planet maintains an elliptical orbit and all of them travel in the same direction.

The planets in our solar system fall into two groups: the terrestrial (Earth-like) planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and the Jovian (Jupiter-like) planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). Pluto is not included in either category, because its great distance from Earth and its small size make this planet's true nature a mystery.

The most obvious difference between the terrestrial and the Jovian planets is their size. The largest terrestrial planet, Earth has a diameter only one quarter as great as the diameter of the smallest Jovian planet, Neptune, and its mass is only one seventeenth as great. Hence, the Jovian planets are often called giants. Also, because of their relative locations, the four Jovian planets are known as the outer planets, while the terrestrial planets are known as the inner planets. There appears to be a correlation between the positions of these planets and their sizes.

Other dimensions along which the two groups differ markedly are density and composition. The densities of the terrestrial planets average about 5 times the density of water, whereas the Jovian planets have densities that average only 1.5 times the density of water. One of the outer planets, Saturn, has a density of only 0.7 that of water, which means that Saturn would float in water. Variations in the composition of the planets are largely responsible for the density differences. The substances that make up both groups of planets are divided into three groups—gases, rocks, and ices—based on their melting points. The terrestrial planets are mostly rocks: dense rocky and metallic material, with minor amounts of gases. The Jovian planets, on the other hand, contain a large percentage of the gases hydrogen and helium, with varying amounts of ices: mostly water, ammonia, and methane ices.

The Jovian planets have very thick atmospheres consisting of varying amounts of hydrogen, helium, methane, and ammonia. By comparison, the terrestrial planets have meager atmospheres at best. A planet's ability to retain an atmosphere depends on its temperature and mass. Simply stated, a gas molecule can "evaporate" from a planet if it reaches a speed known as the escape velocity. For Earth, this velocity is 11 kilometers per second. Any material, including a rocket, must reach this speed before it can leave Earth and go into space. The Jovian planets, because of their greater masses and thus higher surface gravities, have higher escape velocities (21-60 kilometers per second) than the terrestrial planets. Consequently, it is more difficult for gases to "evaporate" from them. Also, because the molecular motion of a gas depends on temperature, at the low temperatures of the Jovian planets even the lightest gases are unlikely to acquire the speed needed to escape. On the other hand, a comparatively warm body with a small surface gravity, like Earth's moon, is unable to hold even the heaviest gas and thus lacks an atmosphere. The slightly larger terrestrial planets Earth, Venus, and Mars retain some heavy gases like carbon dioxide, but even their atmospheres make up only an infinitesimally small portion of their total mass.

The orderly nature of our solar system leads most astronomers to conclude that the planets formed at essentially the same time and from the same material as the Sun. It is hypothesized that the primordial cloud of dust and gas from which all the planets are thought to have condensed had a composition somewhat similar to that of Jupiter. However, unlike Jupiter, the terrestrial planets today are nearly void of light gases and ices. The explanation may be that the   terrestrial planets were once much larger and richer in these materials but eventually lost them because of these bodies' relative closeness to the Sun, which meant that their temperatures were relatively high.

所考词汇

Ammonia     氨水

Methane     甲烷

Warbler      莺

Hawk        鹰

Puffing     喘气

Turnpikes    收税卡

Task 1 二选一/偏爱

内容回忆

大公司工作好还是小公司工作好？

参考答案

As far as I am concerned,I’ll take big company into my consideration. What I am thinking about is that there are so many good benefits. One of them is that big company is a place where there are so many elite employees who had already experienced a lot in society. No matter what kind of tasks that I need to concentrate on, they are gonna be there and supportive. Another feature of the big company will be the salary that people receive each month. Everybody works for a better life. Working in a big company symbolizes a remarkable career path in the future endeavors.

Task 2

阅读

学校要把图书馆变成有独立房间

听力

男生同意

理由待补充

Task 3

阅读

待补充

听力

待补充

Task 4

话题

biology

听力

水利系统产生氧气的两种方式，内在和外在。

                          综合点评

今天难度适中

                         Conversation1

话题分类

生活服务

内容回忆

meal plans膳食计划

                          Conversation2

话题分类

作业考试

内容回忆

有个女生想弄个项目，让大家想丢的东西攒起来

                          Conversation3

话题分类

学术类

内容回忆

学生找教授问怎么收集survey调查问卷的数据，教授说要拓宽思路，然后教授让他去找通信公司要电话号码

                               Lecture1

话题分类

艺术史

内容回忆

印象派绘画

                               Lecture2

话题分类

生物类

内容回忆

一个生物只能生活在水里的原因

                               Lecture3

话题分类

艺术史

内容回忆

音乐史

                               Lecture4

话题分类

地质类

内容回忆

地质学

                               Lecture5

话题分类

政治学

内容回忆

制定预算

综合点评

这次托福考试综合写作部分旧题重现： 2020/11/15考题。

独立写作考查生活类话题，关于减少生活成本，旧题重现：2017/12/17 和2020/8家考原题。

综合写作

考题回忆

总论点

阅读部分-富兰克林的风筝实验是否perform

听力部分-富兰克林的风筝实验存在的

阅读部分

分论点一：本杰明经常在公众面前开玩笑，比如有一次他在波士顿报纸中开玩笑说自己是女性；

分论点二：实验的设计是很危险的，需要有一个direct connection between the nature and the experimental settings，本杰明要是真的实施这个实验会有潜在的威胁他安全的因素；

分论点三：风筝实验没有其他科学家在场，算的上的是他的儿子（他不是科学家）缺乏足够的说服力。

听力部分

分论点一：本杰明是一个serious scientist。科学和journal news不同，科学更严谨。本杰明没有必要risk his reputation to make jokes。况且他之前就发表过一本关于electricity的书，这个实验只是part of his scientific effort；

分论点二：不需要direct connection，indirect就可以。light could spread through the cloud，只要本杰明catch这些spread的light就不会有危险；

分论点三：不需要witness因为这个实验没那么重要。类似的实验在之前就被法国科学家做过了，本杰明的实验只是一种另外的improvement。

解题思路

传统四段式写作，每一段阅读内容+听力内容。

参考范文

The reading passage is about whether Benjamin Franklin's kite experimentation can perform or not. The lecture completely refutes the reading passage. The professor uses the following points to indicate that Benjamin experiment did exist.

To begin with, in spite of the fact in the reading that Benjamin often cracked a joke in public, and he once in the Boston Globe said that he was a woman, the speaker suggests that Benjamin was actually a serious scientist. There were significant differences between journal news and science which was more serious, so Benjamin wouldn’t risk his reputation to make jokes, not to mention that he published a book about electricity, and the experiment was just part of his scientific effort.

Apart from that, the second theory of the reading indicates that Benjamin’s experiment design was so dangerous that the experiment required a direct connection between the nature and the experimental settings. If Benjamin conducted the experiment, there would be a threat to his safety. The lecturer, nevertheless, contends that the indirect connection could keep the experiment function well without direct connection. Because light could spread through the cloud, Benjamin would take no risk as long as he caught the light.

The third theory shows that there were no scientists during the process of the kite experimentation, which meant that the testing was not pervasive even though Benjamin’s son, not a scientist, was there. However, the lecturer points out that witnesses were not needed because similar experiments had been done by French researchers, and Benjamin’s testing was just improvement of them.

独立写作

话题分类

生活类，重复2017/12/17 和2020/8家考原题。

考题回忆

If one of your friends wants to reduce living expenses, which is the most effective way?

- find a roommate that can share the living expenses.

- buy the new technological products (like cell phone) less frequently.

- shop for less expensive food and cook at home (instead of eating in restaurants or buying expensive food item).

解题思路

观点：选择一个能够分担生活开销的室友。

1. 选择合租带来的好处。

2. 承认合租存在一些问题。

写作框架

开头段：背景引入+他人观点+自己观点+过渡句

分论点1：分论点+展开句+论证

分论点2：分论点+展开句+论证

让步段：承认漏洞，削弱其影响

结尾段：重述总论点+重述分论点

参考范文

　 Due to high level of consumptions, young people can usually find themselves stuck in financial deficit. In this case, how to cut down living expenses obviously become an important problem. Some say they may change their mobile phone in a much lower frequency while others propose that they are more willing to cook by themselves in order to save money. However, I consider renting an apartment with a roommate can be the best solution. My view point is based on the following reasons and examples.

　　To begin with, living with a roommate can help us save much more money than cutting down costs in buying new electric devices or cooking at home. The expense of house renting is higher than the money spending on eating stuff or purchasing mobile phone. Take the young working in Shanghai as an example. Renting fees in Shanghai can reach 5,000 RMB to 7000 RMB in average if young people want to live in some convenient districts rather than in some remote areas. If they find a roommate and get the rent shared, he or she can save at least 2,500 RMB per month. When it comes to saving money by stop buying new mobile phone or quitting eating outside, one may only save several hundred RMB one month. So it will be much more effective if one find a roommate to reduce his or her costs on renting than on cellphone or food.

　　In addition, living with another individual can not only lesson one’s financial pressure in renting fees, but also save money in other aspects. Roommates can share furniture or tools together. For example, when I was just graduate from university, I choose to rent with another girl. When we both moved into our new apartment from our dormitory, the first thing we need to deal with was to buy some necessary items such as cooking pot and sofa, for the house we rent was almost empty—there were only two beds in it. I felt very lucky that I decided to live with another girl rather than living by myself, because I had not to pay all the expenses of buying the equipment myself. Sharing those expenditure with my roommate effectively lessened my financial burden.

　　Admittedly, living with another person can lead to some problems. Sometimes, we may encounter with roommates who are quite annoying, like he or she may have several friends singing and dancing in her room till midnight, which will disturb us a lot. Different life style can result in a bad relationship between us and our roommates. Nevertheless, this kind of terrible situation can be prevented by carefully collecting information of our roommates before we make the decision of renting a house with him or her. If we deliberately choose the individual who own a similar living habit as ours, most of the unsatisfactory cases can be avoided ahead of time.

To sum up, compared with keeping using old cellphone and cooking by ourselves, living with a roommate is the best solution when young people want to cut down their expenses. Having another people living with us can share renting fees as well as other various kinds of costs. Although it may lead to some inconvenience, we can effectively eliminate these drawbacks by observing and communicating with our potential roommates before we finally pick up the one we are most likely to get along well with.