综合点评

本次考试阅读难度总体正常，主要围绕生物和历史话题考的比较多，其中有三篇为往期题目文章，建议考生多关注往期机经回忆。

Passage

one

学科分类

题目

历史

工业革命

内容回忆

待回忆

参考阅读

Background for the industrial revolution

Official 49

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

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

Another advantage was Britain’s large population of rural, agricultural wage earners, as well as cottage workers1, who had the potential of being more mobile than peasants of some other countries. Eventually they found their way to the cities or mining communities and provided the human power upon which the Industrial Revolution was built. The British people were also consumers; the absence of internal tariffs, such as those that existed in France or Italy or between the German states, made Britain the largest free-trade area in Europe. Britain’s relatively stable government also helped create an atmosphere conducive to industrial progress.

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

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

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

Passage

two

学科分类

题目

历史类

格陵兰人

内容回忆

待回忆

参考阅读

The Norse in North America

Delta-test 5

The Norse made the first documented European voyages to North America, and there is evidence of these visits in the medieval sagas, a collection of stories that tell the history of the Icelandic people. The Icelandic sagas relate how the Norse captain Leif Eriksson and his brother Thorvald were blown off course during a voyage from Norway to Greenland and landed to the west of Greenland, and also describe Thorfinn Karlsefni’s attempt to colonize a place called Vinland. The sagas are a valuable source of details about these early voyages; however, historians have long expressed skepticism about their accuracy.

Norsemen ventured far from their homeland in Scandinavia to found settlements on the Greenland coast. One of them, the trader Bjarni Herjolfsson, was blown off course and subsequently discovered a wooded coastline, almost certainly that of Newfoundland. Although Herjolfsson did not go ashore, this discovery made him the first European to set eyes on the continent of North America.

Herjolfsson’s account encouraged Leif Eriksson to undertake a southward voyage of exploration, starting around the year 1000. In the course of his travels, Eriksson landed in a place he called Stoneland, which was probably the rocky, barren Labrador coast of North America. Eriksson’s party finally landed in Vinland, where they spent a winter in rough Viking huts in a seemingly frost-free land of abundant vines and wild grapes. They established the first European colony in North America at Vinland, the precise location of which remains a subject of scholarly dispute to this day. The Norsemen returned home in the spring, abandoning the rude settlement that, a few years later, would serve as home base for Thorfinn Karlsefni of Greenland.

Around 1004, the expedition led by Thorfinn Karlsefni set off southward, evidently with a longer stay in mind, as women and cattle accompanied the sailors. Karlsefni and his party passed two years in Vinland, exploring the coast and fighting the local aboriginal tribes, whom they called “skrelings.” Thorfinn Karlsefni was killed in a bloody encounter with a native group, and continued threats from hostile tribes may have thwarted the Norse attempt at colonization. For some reason, they departed their settlement at Vinland, although Greenlanders continued to make occasional visits there in later years, using it as a fishing camp.

Until the twentieth century, the Icelandic sagas were the primary source of information about the Norse exploration of North America. They served as inspiration for Norwegian explorer and writer Helge Ingstad, who in the early 1960s traveled the coasts of eastern North America searching for evidence of Vinland. Encouraged by an alternative interpretation of “vin” as meaning “meadow” rather than vine or wine, he discovered a grassy site on the northern tip of Newfoundland that local people had believed was an aboriginal site haunted by ancient ghosts. There, Ingstad excavated the remains of eight sod huts, together with artifacts of Norse origin such as a bronze pin and sewing tools. He concluded that the grassland called L’Anse aux Meadows was, if not Vinland, then certainly a Norse settlement of some kind.

Passage Three

学科分类

题目

生物

Zebra mussel invasion

内容回忆

主要讲解外来生物zebra mussel 如何影响当地的生态环境，并由此采取哪些措施改善。

参考阅读

Zebra Mussel

The zebra mussel, a freshwater shellfish native to Eastern Europe, has long been spreading out from its original habitats and has now reached parts of North America. There are reasons to believe that this invasion cannot be stopped and that it poses a serious threat to freshwater fish populations in all of North America.

First, the history of the zebra mussel's spread suggests that the invasion might be unstoppable. It is a prime example of an invasion made possible by human transportation. From the zebra mussel，s original habitats in Eastern Europe, ships helped spread it out along new canals built to connect Europe’s waterways. The mussel can attach itself to a ship’ s bottom or can survive in the water—called "ballast water"—that the ship needs to take on to properly balance its cargo. By the early nineteenth century, the mussel had spread to the whole of Europe. It was later carried to the east coast of North America in the ballast water of ships traveling from Europe. The way ships have spread the zebra mussel in the past strongly suggests that the species will soon colonize all of North America.

Moreover, once zebra mussels are carried to a new habitat, they can dominate it. They are a hardy species that does well under a variety of conditions, and they have a high rate of reproduction. Most important, however, zebra mussels often have no predators in their new habitats, and species without natural predators are likely to dominate their habitats.

Finally, zebra mussels are likely to cause a decline in the overall fish population in habitats where they become dominant. The mussels are plankton eaters, which means that they compete for food with many freshwater fish species.

Passage Four

学科分类

题目

生物

Migration

内容回忆

主要以蚂蚁和蜜蜂为例说明昆虫时如何搬家的

参考阅读

Monarch Migration

　　Monarchs are especially noted for their lengthy annual migration. In North America, they make massive southward migrations starting in August until the first frost. A northward migration takes place in the spring. The monarch is the only butterfly that migrates both north and south as the birds do on a regular basis, but no single individual makes the entire round trip. Female monarchs deposit eggs for the next generation during these migrations。

　　By the end of October, the population east of the Rocky Mountains migrates to the sanctuaries of the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve within the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt pine-oak forests in the Mexican states of Michoacán and México. The western population overwinters in various sites in central coastal and southern California, United States, notably in Pacific Grove, Santa Cruz, and Grover Beach。

　　The length of these journeys exceeds the normal lifespan of most monarchs, which is less than two months for butterflies born in early summer. The last generation of the summer enters into a nonreproductive phase known as diapause, which may last seven months or more. During diapause, butterflies fly to one of many overwintering sites. The overwintering generation generally does not reproduce until it leaves the overwintering site sometime in February and March。

　　The overwinter population of those east of the Rockies may reach as far north as Texas and Oklahoma during the spring migration. The second, third and fourth generations return to their northern locations in the United States and Canada in the spring. How the species manages to return to the same overwintering spots over a gap of several generations is still a subject of research; the flight patterns appear to be inherited, based on a combination of the position of the sun in the sky and a time-compensated Sun compass that depends upon a circadian clock based in their antennae. New research has also shown these butterflies can use the earth's magnetic field for orientation. The antennae contain cryptochrome, a photoreceptor protein that is sensitive to the violet-blue part of the spectrum. In the presence of violet or blue light, it can function as a chemical compass, which tells the animal if it is aligned with the earth's magnetic field, but it is unable to tell the difference between the magnetic north or south。

　　The complete magnetical sense is present in a single antenna. Monarch butterflies are one of the few insects capable of making trans-Atlantic crossings. They are becoming more common in Bermuda due to increased usage of milkweed as an ornamental plant in flower gardens. Monarch butterflies born in Bermuda remain year round due to the island's mild climate. A few monarchs turn up in the far southwest of Great Britain in years when the wind conditions are right, and have been sighted as far east as Long Bennington. In Australia, monarchs make limited migrations in cooler areas, but the blue tiger butterfly is better known in Australia for its lengthy migration. Monarchs can also be found in New Zealand. On the islands of Hawaii, no migrations have been noted。

　　Monarch butterflies are poisonous or distasteful to birds and mammals because of the presence of the cardiac glycosides contained in milkweed consumed by the larvae. The bright colors of larvae and adults are thought to function as warning colors. During hibernation, monarch butterflies sometimes suffer losses because hungry birds pick through them looking for the butterflies with the least amount of poison, but in the process kill those they reject。

　　One study examined wing colors of migrating monarchs using computer image analysis, and found migrants had darker orange (reddish-colored) wings than breeding monarchs。

　　Research also has overturned a prevailing theory that the migration patterns of the eastern and western populations are due to genetic reasons and that their genetic material was different. The American populations have been found to be distinct from the populations in New Zealand and Hawaii, but not from each other。

Passage

Five

学科分类

题目

生命科学

Lamarckism & Epigeneticism

内容回忆

两种生物进化理论的讨论：一种是lamarck(拉马克)提出的，一种是Darwin(达尔文)提出的。拉马克认为，生物重要的性状会受到环境的影响，进而遗传给后代个体，和epigeneticism表观遗传学有关。达尔文认为，生物的重要形状由遗传继承，但是由环境造成的改变则不会遗传，这种学说也叫做natural selection。

　　先开始说了一个蛾子的翅膀从白色变黑色，然后就是这个能够遗传下去，并且他没有改变DNA的序列，只是影响了他一些基因的数量。

参考阅读

待回忆

Passage Six

学科分类

题目

生物

New light on dinosaur controversies

内容回忆

讨论恐龙是出生需要parents照顾一段时间还是很快就独立。

参考阅读

Explaining Dinosaur Extinction

Official 42

Dinosaurs rapidly became extinct about 65 million years ago as part of a mass extinction known as the K–T event, because it is associated with a geological signature known as the K–T boundary, usually a thin band of sedimentation found in various parts of the world (K is the traditional abbreviation for the Cretaceous, derived from the German name Kreidezeit). Many explanations have been proposed for why dinosaurs became extinct. For example, some have blamed dinosaur extinction on the development of flowering plants, which were supposedly more difficult to digest and could have caused constipation or indigestion—except that flowering plants first evolved in the Early Cretaceous, about 60 million years before the dinosaurs died out. In fact, several scientists have suggested that the duckbill dinosaurs and horned dinosaurs, with their complex battery of grinding teeth, evolved to exploit this new resource of rapidly growing flowering plants. Others have blamed extinction on competition from the mammals, which allegedly ate all the dinosaur eggs—except that mammals and dinosaurs appeared at the same time in the Late Triassic, about 190 million years ago, and there is no reason to believe that mammals suddenly acquired a taste for dinosaur eggs after 120 million years of coexistence. Some explanations (such as the one stating that dinosaurs all died of diseases) fail because there is no way to scientifically test them, and they cannot move beyond the realm of speculation and guesswork.

This focus on explaining dinosaur extinction misses an important point: the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous was a global event that killed off organisms up and down the food chain. It wiped out many kinds of plankton in the ocean and many marine organisms that lived on the plankton at the base of the food chain. These included a variety of clams and snails, and especially the ammonites, a group of shelled squidlike creatures that dominated the Mesozoic seas and had survived many previous mass extinctions. The K–T event marked the end of the marine reptiles, such as the mosasaurs and the plesiosaurs, which were the largest creatures that had ever lived in the seas and which ruled the seas long before whales evolved. On land, there was also a crisis among the land plants, in addition to the disappearance of dinosaurs. So any event that can explain the destruction of the base of the food chain (plankton in the ocean, plants on land) can better explain what happened to organisms at the top of the food chain, such as the dinosaurs. By contrast, any explanation that focuses strictly on the dinosaurs completely misses the point. The Cretaceous extinctions were a global phenomenon, and dinosaurs were just a part of a bigger picture.

According to one theory, the Age of Dinosaurs ended suddenly 65 million years ago when a giant rock from space plummeted to Earth. Estimated to be ten to fifteen kilometers in diameter, this bolide (either a comet or an asteroid) was traveling at cosmic speeds of 20–70 kilometers per second, or 45,000–156,000 miles per hour. Such a huge mass traveling at such tremendous speeds carries an enormous amount of energy. When the bolide struck, this energy was released and generated a huge shock wave that leveled everything for thousands of kilometers around the impact and caused most of the landscape to burst into flames. The bolide struck an area of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico known as Chicxulub, excavating a crater 15–20 kilometers deep and at least 170 kilometers in diameter. The impact displaced huge volumes of seawater, causing much flood damage in the Caribbean. Meanwhile, the bolide itself excavated 100 cubic kilometers of rock and debris from the site, which rose to an altitude of 100 kilometers. Most of it fell back immediately, but some of it remained as dust in the atmosphere for months. This material, along with the smoke from the fires, shrouded Earth, creating a form of nuclear winter. According to computerized climate models, global temperatures fell to near the freezing point, photosynthesis halted, and most plants on land and in the sea died. With the bottom of the food chain destroyed, dinosaurs could not survive.

综合点评

这次托福考试写作部分整体难度适中。

其中，综合写作考查环境类，整体难度适中，除了部分环境类的专业词汇。

独立写作考查教育类话题，难度适中，类似2019/6/29考题，学生在备考过程中如果熟悉有关教育类素材应该问题不大。

综合写作

话题分类

环境类

考题回忆

总论点

三种alternative methods去代替fossil fuel，来解决global warming

阅读部分

现在汽车使用化石燃料会释放二氧化碳carbon dioxide，是造成全球变暖global warming的主要原因，提出了三种alternative methods去代替fossil fuel：

分论点一： 氢能源hydrogen energy。氢能源是有氢hydrogen和氧oxygen产生的，不会排放二氧化碳carbon dioxide，只会排放水；

分论点二：生物燃料bio-fuel。生物燃料是从植物中提取的（extracted from），提取过程中是释放release二氧化碳，但是，植物生长过程中是会吸收absorb二氧化碳的，所以吸收的二氧化碳是可以抵消释放出的二氧化碳的 ；

分论点三：从空气中提取二氧化碳转化convert成替代合成燃料。这样即便燃料使用过程中排放二氧化碳，也只是一种二氧化碳的循环，不会真正增加空气中二氧化碳含量。

听力部分

认为这三种alternative methods都not practical或有drawbacks：

分论点一：氢燃料确实不会释放二氧化碳，但是生产加工出氢燃料的过程是需要燃烧传统的含碳的fossil fuel的，比如需要使用天然气，而用天然气去生产氢燃料仍然会释放大量的二氧化碳，所以global warming并不会得到缓解；

分论点二：生物燃料无法去replace化石燃料。因为要生产bio-fuel，那就需要种植大量的植物，需要有足够的land。例如，在美国生产bio-fuel的话，需要用掉两百万平方公里的土地来生产玉米和甘蔗corn and sugar cane，这个面积相当于美国现在农业用地的两倍。然而实际上，并没有那么多土地去种植；

分论点三：从空气中提取燃料，在目前来看并不实际not practical。现在的科学技术还无法实现将大量二氧化碳转化成大量燃料来满足现在人们对燃料的需求。

解题思路

传统四段式写作，每一段阅读内容+听力内容，注意细节和同义替换

参考范文

The reading passage claim that nowadays since the increasing use of automobiles, the discharge of carbon dioxide is the main reason for global warming. In order to reduce the use of fossil fuels, the writer offers three solutions to replace its use. The listening material, however, points out that these methods are not practical.

First of all, the reading passage suggests to use hydrogen energy, which is composed of hydrogen and oxygen so it cannot release carbon dioxide except for water. However, the listening argues that the production of hydrogen energy needs to burn fossil fuels, such as natural gas. The whole process will still produce carbon dioxide and so cannot help alleviate global warming.

Secondly, the article says that bio-fuel is another effective way, which is extracted from plants. Although this process may release carbon dioxide, the growth of plants can absorb these CO2. The lecturer, however, rebuts it by pointing out that in order to produce bio-fuel, a large number of plants need to be cultivated, but the truth is that there are not enough lands. He takes America as an example. To produce bio-fuel, two million square kilometres of lands need to be used to plant corn and sugar cane, which almost double the agricultural lands in the US.

Finally, the author advises to convert CO2 in the air into another synthetic fuel, by which he means that although it still could release CO2, this process is only a recycle of CO2 and no more CO2 can be produced. In contrast, the lecturer’ position is that because the technologies at present cannot convert such a large amount of CO2 into fuels to meet people’s demand, this method is not practical at all.

独立写作

话题分类

教育类，类似2019/6/29题目

考题回忆

Teachers at a high school think that some of their students are bored or uninterested in learning. In your view, which ONE of these actions that teachers can take will be most effective in increasing high school students' interest in learning? Why?

-Using technology in their classrooms more often

-Asking students to work more often in groups or teams instead of working alone

-Explaining how the lessons they teach in the classroom have a connection to events in the world outside the classroom

解题思路

选择第三个，原因：

1 很多高中生对自己为什么要学习并没有清晰的概念，仅仅是为了学习而学习

2教室外的事情更加丰富多元化、更有趣—相比于仅仅教授课堂知识，增加课堂内所学内容与其的联系，可以增加学生自身的学习动力，激发学生学习热情和兴趣，

3 同时相比于其它两个方法，这个方法也是更根本的，持续时间也会更长

举例：学外语

单纯学习词汇、语法—枯燥

联系实际在生活、工作的运用场景，如旅行、美食等—让学生觉得更生动，同时学习的内容也是有用的，不仅仅是枯燥的学术知识—从而刺激其学习动力

让步：

1 更多在教室里使用现代科技

现在科技突飞猛进，带动了多媒体教学，如投影仪、LED屏、音箱等的使用相对仅用黑板or白板，让枯燥的知识通过PPT、视频、音频等让知识更加形象化

2 小组学习代替独立学习

独立学习通常会让学生独自思考和解决在学习中面临的各类问题，如果采用小组学习的形式，学生之间会有更多的机会进行讨论和沟通，分享学习经验，共同解决学习中的难题，相互鼓励，让学生觉得学习不再只是自己一个人的孤军奋战，更有学习氛围，从而增加学习兴趣

反驳：

但是，这些相比方案3都更加强调的是客观的因素，对自身的因素关注较少，一旦没有了这种外在因素的刺激，学生可能还是会缺乏学习动力，不是根本和持久的

参考范文

范文：

It is quite common that facing fierce competition, many high school students these days are under intense pressure. A large amount of tedious or sometimes tough assignments can easily make them feel bored or uninterested in learning. Teachers are continually trying to find out effective solutions to help alleviate this situation, among which I personally think that compared with using technology in classrooms and asking students to working in groups, explaining the connection of the lessons in classroom with the events in the world outside the classroom would be the most effective approach.

The main reason is that in teenage years, many high school students lack a clear perspective about why they should study, and compared with monotonous academic knowledge, the world outside the classroom is more diversified and often more interesting. As a result, increasing the connection between what is learned in class with those outside events can not only inspire students’ motivation, but also stimulate their enthusiasm and interest in learning. At the same time, since this method is based on the students themselves, it can be more fundamental and can last longer than the other two approaches. For instance, in the course of language teaching, just asking students to learn the vocabulary and grammar, undoubtedly, is so boring that students may easily get distracted. However, if teachers can show them the actual examples in real life, such as travelling, work scenes, and so on, these students can feel what they learn is useful and consequently be motivated to study.

Admittedly, the other two methods also have their own disadvantages. For one thing, with the rapid development of modern technology, multimedia is widely applied in the teaching process. In comparison with blackboard or white board, the use of projector, LED screen and speakers has made teaching more vivid, which, to some extent, can help students increase their study interest. For another, working in group can enable students to have more opportunities to communicate with each other, sharing learning experience and settling the problems they encounter in study together. This method can make students feel that they are no longer learning alone and so are inspired to study. However, it should be pointed that these two solutions both more focus on the external factors rather than students themselves. Without them, students still could lack the motivation and interest to persist in their learning, so they are not the most fundamental and long-lasting.

To sum up, while the solutions of using technology in classroom and making students work more often in groups indeed have some benefits, I still suggest teachers explain how the lessons they teach in the classroom have a connection to events in the world outside the classroom, which, I believe, is the most effective to inspire high school students to learn.