综合点评

这次考试阅读题目整体难度适中，以生物环境和当代科技类文章为主所以在题材、背景方面都是考生比较熟悉的，主要考查学生解题技巧和熟练度。

Passage

one

学科分类

题目

美国经济

American Economy

内容回忆

主要讲解英国如何殖民美国并带去经济体系

参考阅读

Nineteenth-Century Politics in the United States

The development of the modern presidency in the United States began with Andrew Jackson who swept to power in 1829 at the head of the Democratic Party and served until 1837. During his administration, he immeasurably enlarged the power of the presidency. "The President is the direct representative of the American people," he lectured the Senate when it opposed him. "He was elected by the people, and is responsible to them." With this declaration, Jackson redefined the character of the presidential office and its relationship to the people.

During Jackson's second term, his opponents had gradually come together to form the Whig party. Whigs and Democrats held different attitudes toward the changes brought about by the market, banks, and commerce. The Democrats tended to view society as a continuing conflict between "the people”—farmers, planters, and workers—and a set of greedy aristocrats. This "paper money aristocracy" of bankers and investors manipulated the banking system for their own profit, Democrats claimed, and sapped the nation's virtue by encouraging speculation and the desire for sudden, unearned wealth. The Democrats wanted the rewards of the market without sacrificing the features of a simple agrarian republic. They wanted the wealth that the market offered without the competitive, changing society; the complex dealing; the dominance of urban centers; and the loss of independence that came with it.

Whigs, on the other hand, were more comfortable with the market. For them, commerce and economic development were agents of civilization. Nor did the Whigs envision any conflict in society between farmers and workers on the one hand and businesspeople and bankers on the other. Economic growth would benefit everyone by raising national income and expanding opportunity. The government's responsibility was to provide a well-regulated economy that guaranteed opportunity for citizens of ability.

Whigs and Democrats differed not only in their attitudes toward the market but also about how active the central government should be in people's lives. Despite Andrew Jackson's inclination to be a strong President, Democrats as a rule believed in limited government. Government's role in the economy was to promote competition by destroying monopolies' and special privileges. In keeping with this philosophy of limited government, Democrats also rejected the idea that moral beliefs were the proper sphere of government action. Religion and politics, they believed, should be kept clearly separate, and they generally opposed humanitarian legislation.

The Whigs, in contrast, viewed government power positively. They believed that it should be used to protect individual rights and public liberty, and that it had a special role where individual effort was ineffective. By regulating the economy and competition, the government could ensure equal opportunity. Indeed, for Whigs the concept of government promoting the general welfare went beyond the economy. In particular, Whigs in the northern sections of the United States also believed that government power should be used to foster the moral welfare of the country. They were much more likely to favor social-reform legislation and aid to education.

In some ways the social makeup of the two parties was similar. To be competitive in winning votes, Whigs and Democrats both had to have significant support among farmers, the largest group in society, and workers.Neither party could win an election by appealing exclusively to the rich or the poor. The Whigs, however, enjoyed disproportionate strength among the business and commercial classes. Whigs appealed to planters who needed credit to finance their cotton and rice trade in the world market, to farmers who were eager to sell their surpluses, and to workers who wished to improve themselves. Democrats attracted farmers isolated from the market or uncomfortable with it, workers alienated from the emerging industrial system, and rising entrepreneurs who wanted to break monopolies and open the economy to newcomers like themselves. The Whigs were strongest in the towns, cities, and those rural areas that were fully integrated into the market economy, whereas Democrats dominated areas of semisubsistence farming that were more isolated and languishing economically.

Passage

two

学科分类

题目

生物

关于火烈鸟的生活习惯

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 Three

学科分类

题目

环境类

氨基酸如何初在地球上生成

内容回忆

暂无

参考阅读

The Cambrian Explosion

The geologic timescale is marked by significant geologic and biological events, including the origin of Earth about 4.6 billion years ago, the origin of life about 3.5 billion years ago, the origin of eukaryotic life-forms (living things that have cells with true nuclei) about 1.5 billion years ago, and the origin of animals about 0.6 billion years ago. The last event marks the beginning of the Cambrian period. Animals originated relatively late in the history of Earth—in only the last 10 percent of Earth’s history. During a geologically brief 100-million-year period, all modern animal groups (along with other animals that are now extinct) evolved. This rapid origin and diversification of animals is often referred to as “the Cambrian explosion.”

Scientists have asked important questions about this explosion for more than a century. Why did it occur so late in the history of Earth? The origin of multicellular forms of life seems a relatively simple step compared to the origin of life itself. Why does the fossil record not document the series of evolutionary changes during the evolution of animals? Why did animal life evolve so quickly? Paleontologists continue to search the fossil record for answers to these questions.

One interpretation regarding the absence of fossils during this important 100-million-year period is that early animals were soft bodied and simply did not fossilize. Fossilization of soft-bodied animals is less likely than fossilization of hard-bodied animals, but it does occur. Conditions that promote fossilization of soft-bodied animals include very rapid covering by sediments that create an environment that discourages decomposition. In fact, fossil beds containing soft-bodied animals have been known for many years.

The Ediacara fossil formation, which contains the oldest known animal fossils, consists exclusively of soft-bodied forms. Although named after a site in Australia, the Ediacara formation is worldwide in distribution and dates to Precambrian times. This 700-million-year-old formation gives few clues to the origins of modern animals, however, because paleontologists believe it represents an evolutionary experiment that failed. It contains no ancestors of modern animal groups.

A slightly younger fossil formation containing animal remains is the Tommotian formation, named after a locale in Russia. It dates to the very early Cambrian period, and it also contains only soft-bodied forms. At one time, the animals present in these fossil beds were assigned to various modern animal groups, but most paleontologists now agree that all Tommotian fossils represent unique body forms that arose in the early Cambrian period and disappeared before the end of the period, leaving no descendants in modern animal groups.

A third fossil formation containing both soft-bodied and hard-bodied animals provides evidence of the result of the Cambrian explosion. This fossil formation, called the Burgess Shale, is in Yoho National Park in the Canadian Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. Shortly after the Cambrian explosion, mud slides rapidly buried thousands of marine animals under conditions that favored fossilization. These fossil beds provide evidence of about 32 modern animal groups, plus about 20 other animal body forms that are so different from any modern animals that they cannot be assigned to any one of the modern groups. These unassignable animals include a large swimming predator called Anomalocaris and a soft-bodied animal called Wiwaxia, which ate detritus or algae. The Burgess Shale formation also has fossils of many extinct representatives of modern animal groups. For  example, a well-known Burgess Shale animal called Sidneyia is a representative of a previously unknown group of arthropods (a category of animals that includes insects, spiders, mites, and crabs).

Fossil formations like the Burgess Shale show that evolution cannot always be thought of as a slow progression. The Cambrian explosion involved rapid evolutionary diversification, followed by the extinction of many unique animals. Why was this evolution so rapid? No one really knows. Many zoologists believe that it was because so many ecological niches were available with virtually no competition from existing species. Will zoologists ever know the evolutionary sequences in the Cambrian explosion? Perhaps another ancient fossil bed of soft-bodied animals from 600-million-year-old seas is awaiting discovery.

Passage Four

学科分类

题目

科技类

美国蒸汽机发展史

内容回忆

暂无

参考阅读

The Development of Steam Power

By the eighteenth century, Britain was experiencing a severe shortage of energy. Because of the growth of population, most of the great forests of medieval Britain had long ago been replaced by fields of grain and hay. Wood was in ever-shorter supply, yet it remained tremendously important. It served as the primary source of heat for all homes and industries and as a basic raw material. Processed wood (charcoal) was the fuel that was mixed with iron ore in the blast furnace to produce pig iron (raw iron). The iron industry’s appetite for wood was enormous, and by 1740 the British iron industry was stagnating. Vast forests enabled Russia to become the world’s leading producer of iron, much of which was exported to Britain. But Russia’s potential for growth was limited too, and in a few decades Russia would reach the barrier of inadequate energy that was already holding England back.

As this early energy crisis grew worse, Britain looked toward its abundant and widely scattered reserves of coal as an alternative to its vanishing wood. Coal was first used in Britain in the late Middle Ages as a source of heat. By 1640 most homes in London were heated with it, and it also provided heat for making beer, glass, soap, and other products. Coal was not used, however, to produce mechanical energy or to power machinery. It was there that coal’s potential wad enormous.

As more coal was produced, mines were dug deeper and deeper and were constantly filling with water. Mechanical pumps, usually powered by hundreds of horses waling in circles at the surface, had to be installed. Such power was expensive and bothersome. In an attempt to overcome these disadvantages, Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas Newcomen in 1705 invented the first primitive steam engines. Both engines were extremely inefficient. Both burned coal to produce steam, which was then used to operate a pump. However, by the early 1770s, many of the Savery engines and hundreds of the Newcomen engines were operating successfully, though inefficiently, in English and Scottish mines.

In the early 1760s, a gifted young Scot named James Watt was drawn to a critical study of the steam engine. Watt was employed at the time by the University of Glasgow as a skilled crafts worker making scientific instruments. In 1763, Watt was called on to repair a Newcomen engine being used in a physics course. After a series of observations, Watt saw that the New comen’s waste of energy could be reduced by adding a separate condenser. This splendid invention, patented in 1769, greatly increased the efficiency of the steam engine. The steam engine of Watt and his followers was the technological advance that gave people, at least for a while, unlimited power and allowed the invention and use of all kinds of power equipment.

The steam engine was quickly put to use in several industries in Britain. It drained mines and made possible the production of ever more coal to feed steam engines elsewhere. The steam power plant began to replace waterpower in the cotton-spinning mills as well as other industries during the 1780s, contributing to a phenomenal rise in industrialization. The British iron industry was radically transformed. The use of powerful, steam-driven bellows in blast furnaces helped iron makers switch over rapidly from limited charcoal to unlimited coke (which is made from coal) in the smelting of pig iron (the process of refining impure iron) after 1770 in the 1780s, Henry Cort developed the puddling furnace, which allowed pig iron to be refined in turn with coke. Cort also developed heavy-duty, steam-powered rolling mills, which were capable of producing finished iron in every shape and form.

The economic consequence of these technical innovations in steam power was a great boom in the British iron industry. In 1740 annual British iron production was only 17,000 tons, but by 1844, with the spread of coke smelting and the impact of Cort’s inventions, it had increased to 3,000,000 tons. This was a truly amazing expansion. Once scarce and expensive, iron became cheap, basic, and indispensable to the economy.

所考词汇

Wail  v.呼啸

Stagnate v.停滞

Niche  n.壁龛

Timescale n.时间段

Vigorous adj.剧烈的

Semisubsistence  n.半生命体

                          综合点评

今天难度适中

                         Conversation1

话题分类

校园生活

内容回忆

一个女学生和老师沟通座位预定的事项，问原先预定的房间有几个座位能否容纳10人。

她先问老师能否预定另外的房间，老师回答需要取消原先的房间，原先预定的房间在他们会议楼的手册有新出的“N”规定，女生说她需要花时间弄清楚这个新规定。

换房间是因为教授加了人，从5人变成10人，老师帮她换了隔壁10人的房间，但是没有电脑只有白板。老师让女生登录官网确认房间更改信息。

                         Conversation2

话题分类

课外活动

内容回忆

老师发现展览志愿者不来了让另一个自愿的学生上。

                         Conversation3

话题分类

学术论文

内容回忆

学生找老师讨论feedback，老师很尴尬，指出了2点：他的文章太泛泛而谈没有具体的方向去深入探讨的、跑题了需要遵循题目不要过度的发挥。

学生的论文是关于狄金森的，学生问老师能否从友谊方面写，老师说可以但需要深入，指出具体和谁的友谊，举例可以写狄金森和艾米莉的关系。

学生问可以重写补分吗？老师说取决于你但不建议补，因为他之前还欠了一些东西，并且他们下个题目和这个题目是相似的。

                               Lecture1

话题分类

哲学

内容回忆

古希腊的哲学家发现了水的不同状态

                               Lecture2

话题分类

地质学

内容回忆

撒哈拉沙漠的形成：植被蒸腾作用和阳光照射对于沙漠化的影响，以前撒哈拉其实是草地，学者叫它green Sahara

                               Lecture3

话题分类

艺术类

内容回忆

俄罗斯导演拍的电影，在原来沙俄的宫殿现在改为博物馆的地点取景，采用了一镜到底的方式拍摄，教授举例这种拍摄手法和普通拍摄手法的区别。拍摄非常具有挑战：在博物馆不能触碰展品，摄像机太重一镜到底很困难。

Task 1

内容回忆

【*旧题重现：2014年6月21日原题】

Do you agree or disagree with the statement that children should do houseworks when they're old enough.

参考答案

I agree that children should do houseworks when they are old enough to do so. This is because as a family member, everyone should help with the household chores instead of waiting for someone else to do them. Kids could also do what they can do, like putting away the toys or throwing trash away. Also, they can even benefit from doing housework. It can be fun, and they can learn from their parents. When they grow up and leave home someday in the future, they can easily survive and have a better life because of taking good care of themselves.

Task 2

阅读

cancellation of poetry class

同意

听力

不同意

Task 3

阅读

startle defense

听力

grasshopper有防御功能change color and make noise，然后就能逃跑

Task 4

话题

让顾客试用产品的2个优点

听力

1.让顾客提建议可以改进产品

2.打广告

综合点评

本次综合写作重复2019.7.7考题，涉及政府决策，该话题在托福考试中占比不高，听力和阅读是相互反驳的，难点在于把握听力中的细节信息。

另外，独立写作属于高频考察的教育类话题，也是经典考题类型三选一，要看准题目核心词，审题不要跑题。

综合写作

话题分类

政府类

考题回忆

总论点

政府是否应该给art和artists任何financial support

阅读部分

1. 艺术不是政府的obligation，公民的娱乐已经超出了政府的管辖范围，而且有很多其他的东西需要政府的支持

2. 政府会使用censorship来控制艺术，他们可以选择那些支持政府的作品，art funding导致政府歧视观点不同的art

3. 艺术不需要政府资助，美国art已经很牛了，看看好莱坞电影这么受欢迎

听力部分

1. 是政府的legitimated function，艺术为大众提供recognition、pleasure，是政府的责任，如national park

2. 因为有些机构是political-independent的，他们才不关心什么作品里的政治因素，他们就关心作品质量，还专门请专人来评判

3. 商业艺术不用投入，但是其它就要，电视和movie不是art好的说明，有些项目比如children art是很重要的，而且你不能指望这些项目去搞商业化

解题思路

听力部分分别反驳了阅读中的论据。

参考范文

The reading passage and lecture debate on the necessity of governmental fiscal support on art and artists.

According to the first theory in the reading, it is not governmental responsibility to provide financial support. It never lies in governments’ obligation to guarantee civil entertainment. As a matter of fact, there are more functions that government has to consider other than offer public with artistic pleasure. However, the lecture finds it a legitimated function for the government, due to the fact that arts can enrich public recognition and pleasure, which means fulfilling such function can win public support for the government.

The second reason raised in the passage is government funding may lead to government’s control over artistic works since these works are exposed to strict censorship and those with different views or positions will be discriminated against by the government. Yet, the lecturer opposes, contending that artistic works are assessed by politically independent institutes with the help of experts, which will focus more on quality of the works rather than its political implication.

The last idea, according to the passage, is artistic industry makes huge profits, especially in the case of Hollywood, which gains worldwide popularity around the world. However, it is challenged by the professor, who maintains that even though commercial artistic industry can survive without government funding, there are still other artistic projects, including children art programs, that require fiscal support

独立写作

话题分类

教育类

考题回忆

Which value should be shared by children (5-10 years old) most and why?

- Being honest
- Being helpful to others
- Being well-organized

解题思路

观点：从小要培养的重要的品质是honesty。

　　主体段一：honesty 是人们一生都需要遵守的准则，从小培养这一品质对自己和对社会都

　　有好处;

　　主体段二：being helpful 对小孩来说可能心有余而力不足，小孩心智不成熟，难以给出很

　　大的帮助;Being organized 反而可能会限制小孩天马行空的想法，不利于小孩的发展;

参考范文

It is widely acknowledged that valuable qualities should be inculcated in children as early as possible, since younger children tend to be molded more easily by the outside world than older ones. Among the three possible values—being helpful, being honest and being well organized— I reckon honesty the most important trait that children should develop from a young age.

Honesty is without a doubt the basic principle that every individual should live by all along one’s life. Fostering this quality in young children would yield the most benefits not only for themselves but also for the community. For one thing, being honest is one of the most important considerations in any relationships, in the promotion of employees, and in the election of leaders, etc. It is not an overstatement that honesty is a prerequisite of a promising future, and there is every reason to share with young children. For another thing, dishonesty can erode any organization. For example, a person who discloses the company’s confidential information to a competitor might be the one who lied about the unfinished homework to teachers at a young age. With no warning or punishment, children might deem it not big deal to lie and have little awareness of how severe it is. One can be less helpful or not organized but being dishonest would be disastrous. Therefore, it is imperative to educate children to be honest; the earlier, the better.

On the other hand, it is not that realistic to expect children between five and ten years old to be a big help or do things in a well-organized way. Children at this age are usually not physically or mentally mature to comprehend complex issues or figure out feasible solutions. The fact is that these abilities can only be obtained through real life experience, rather than through instructions from the elders.

Furthermore, I doubt, to some extent, whether being well organized is of benefit to children because the children’s nature of curiosity and free-thinking may be restricted. Indeed, children should not be deprived of their own way to see the world or do things, be it ridiculous or not, since this is how imagination and creativity flourish.

In conclusion, regarding the most favorable qualities that children should develop, I believe honesty should be given top priority. The reason is that honesty lays the foundation of the prosperity of both individuals and society, while the other two qualities (being helpful and well organized) are likely either to be unrealistic or to restrict children’s development.