2013年11月9日托福阅读真题解析

2013年11月9日托福阅读真题解析
2013年11月9日托福阅读真题解析

2013年11月9日托福阅读真题解析

第一篇:

主题:动物的行为来自本能,还是后天学习

为解答此问题,文中给出两种理论:

1、认为动物的行为来自于基因。例子:begging call(乞食的叫声),雏鸟出生就会。

2、行为是后天习得的。专家用实验做了证明。实验的实例:雏鸟会叫,是因为在卵中听过

成年鸟的叫声。

结论:动物的行为来自先天与后天条件的共同影响。

解析:

文章结构非常清晰,是典型的“现象——问题——假说解答——证据——结论”发展流程。“本能与学习”也并非新鲜话题,TPO, OG和其他真题当中早有涉及,各位考生可以参考

Feeding Habits of East African Herbivores, Orientation and Navigation等文章。另外请注意,文章发展流程中“证据”一节,在生物学话题中,往往以实验的形式出现;“结论”一节不一定提出准确、单一的结论,而可能由于证据不足而并无明确结论。

下面是关于“本能”的参考资料

Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular complex behavior.

The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a clearly defined stimulus.

Any behavior is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience (that is, in the absence of learning), and is therefore an expression of innate biological factors. Sea turtles, newly hatched on a beach, will automatically move toward the ocean. A joey climbs into its mother's pouch upon being born.[1]Honeybees communicate by dancing in the direction of a food source without formal instruction. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behavior, internal escape functions, and the building of nests. All of these are examples of complex behaviors and are thus substantially different from simple reflex behaviors.

An instinct should be distinguished from a reflex, which is a simple response of an organism to a specific stimulus, such as the contraction of the pupil in response to bright light or the spasmodic movement of the lower leg when the knee is tapped. Instincts, in contrast, are inborn complex patterns of behavior that must exist in every member of the species and that cannot be overcome by force of will.[2] However, the absence of volitional capacity must not be confused with an inability to modify fixed action patterns. For example, people may be able to modify a stimulated fixed action pattern by consciously recognizing the point of its activation and simply stop doing it, whereas animals without a sufficiently strong

volitional capacity may not be able to disengage from their fixed action patterns, once activated.[3]

The role of instincts in determining the behavior of animals varies from species to species. The more complex the neural system of an animal, the greater is the role of the cerebral cortex, and social learning and instincts play a lesser role. A comparison between a crocodile and an elephant illustrates how mammals for example are heavily dependent on social learning. Lionesses and chimpanzees raised in zoos away from their birth mothers most often reject their own offspring because they have not been taught the skills of mothering. Such is not the case with simpler species such as reptiles

第二篇:

主题:雨林里的叫声

第一、二段举若干雨林中动物发声的例子,青蛙发声的方式是其中一例。

中间若干段讨论雨林中动物在什么时间发声——结论是黎明和黄昏最吵,而正午最静。原因可能是夜间声音传播效果好。

科学家在雨林中收集声音样本,发现听起来杂乱无章的声音,实际上各频率之间分隔很清楚。不同物种占据不同的声音频率。

解析:

与第一篇相比,结构略显松散。从若干发生动物的例子,到关于发声时间的讨论,再到不同

物种发声频率的分布,并无逻辑上的必然联系。但是,讨论的深入程度,还是随段落的发展在逐渐提升——即由具体(青蛙等例子)到抽象(声音的频率),由定性(青蛙等例子)到定量(声音的时间分布)到更精确定量(频率分布)。

下面是关于“雨林”的参考资料

Tropical rainforests are characterized in two words: warm and wet. Mean monthly temperatures exceed 18 °C (64 °F) during all months of the year.[5] Average annual rainfall is no less than 168 cm (66 in) and can exceed 1,000 cm (390 in) although it typically lies between 175 cm (69 in) and 200 cm (79 in).[6]

Many of the world's rainforests are associated with the location of the monsoon trough, also known as the intertropical convergence zone.[7] Tropical rainforests are rainforests in the tropics, found in the equatorial zone (between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn). Tropical rainforest is present in Southeast Asia (from Myanmar (Burma) to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and northeastern Australia), Sri Lanka, sub-Saharan Africa from Cameroon to the Congo (Congo Rainforest), South America (e.g. the Amazon Rainforest), Central America (e.g. Bosawás, southern Yucatán Peninsula-El Peten-Belize-Calakmul), and on many of the Pacific Islands (such as Hawai?i). Tropical rainforests have been called the "Earth's lungs", although it is now known that rainforests contribute little net oxygen addition to the atmosphere through photosynthesis.[8][9]

Tropical rainforests are characterized in two words: warm and wet. Mean monthly temperatures exceed 18 °C (64 °F) during all months of the year.[5] Average annual rainfall is no less than 168 cm (66 in) and can exceed 1,000 cm (390 in) although it typically lies between 175 cm (69 in) and 200 cm (79 in).[6]

Many of the world's rainforests are associated with the location of the monsoon trough, also known as the intertropical convergence zone.[7] Tropical rainforests are rainforests in the tropics, found in the equatorial zone (between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn). Tropical rainforest is present in Southeast Asia (from Myanmar (Burma) to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and northeastern Australia), Sri Lanka, sub-Saharan Africa from Cameroon to the Congo (Congo Rainforest), South America (e.g. the Amazon Rainforest), Central America (e.g. Bosawás, southern Yucatán Peninsula-El Peten-Belize-Calakmul), and on many of the Pacific Islands (such as Hawai?i). Tropical rainforests have been called the "Earth's lungs", although it is now known that rainforests contribute little net oxygen addition to the atmosphere through photosynthesis.[8][9]

Tropical forests cover a large part of the globe, but temperate rainforests only occur in few regions around the world. Temperate rainforests are rainforests in temperate regions. They occur in North America (in the Pacific Northwest, the British Columbia Coast and in the inland rainforest of the Rocky Mountain Trench east of

Prince George), in Europe (parts of the British Isles such as the coastal areas of Ireland and Scotland, southern Norway, parts of the western Balkans along the Adriatic coast, as well as in Galicia and coastal areas of the eastern Black Sea, including Georgia and coastal Turkey), in East Asia (in southern China, Taiwan, much of Japan and Korea, and on Sakhalin Island and the adjacent Russian Far East coast), in South America (southern Chile) and also in Australia and New Zealand.[10]

第三篇:

主题:大陆漂移假说的起源

早期:美洲大陆和非洲大陆的形状可以拼接,使人怀疑大陆是否曾经相互连接。有人认为月球引力是大陆漂移的原因,但此说很可疑。

中期:学者AW氏正式提出大陆漂移假说。他提出支持假说的根据有美洲、非洲相似的岩层和冰川遗迹。

后期:很多学者支持AW氏提出的假说,并纷纷发现新的证据,使此说越来越可信。

根据大陆漂移假说,合理的进一步推论:远古时代,大陆一度挤成一团,并无欧亚非之分。

解析:

所谓学者AW氏,无疑就是Alfred Lothar Wegener, 德国地质学家魏格纳。文章题材,也并不新鲜,就是围绕特定现象,讲述学说更新的历史。此类典型文章可参见the Origin of the Pacific Island People, the Origins of Agriculture。学说更新的历史,其结论往往容易预测——新的学说得到越来越多支持性证据,而老的学生被反证否定,最终大多数人接受了

新学说。

以下是关于魏格纳其人的若干资料。

Alfred Lothar Wegener (November 1, 1880 – November 1930) was a German polar researcher, geophysicist and meteorologist.

During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered for advancing the theory of continental drift (Kontinentalverschiebung) in 1912, which hypothesized that the continents were slowly drifting around the Earth. His hypothesis was controversial and not widely accepted until the 1950s, when numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift, and thereby a substantial basis for today's model of Plate tectonics.[1][2] Wegener was involved in several expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation before the existence of the jet stream was accepted. Expedition participants made many meteorological observations and achieved the first-ever overwintering on the inland Greenland ice sheet as well as the first-ever boring of ice cores on a moving Arctic glacier.

First Greenland expedition and years in Marburg

In that same year 1906, Wegener participated in the first of his four Greenland

expeditions, later regarding this experience as marking a decisive turning point in his life. The expedition was led by the Dane Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen and charged with studying the last unknown portion of the northeastern coast of Greenland. During the expedition Wegener constructed the first meteorological station in Greenland near Danmarkshavn, where he launched kites and tethered balloons to make meteorological measurements in an Arctic climatic zone. Here Wegener also made his first acquaintance with death in a wilderness of ice when the expedition leader and two of his colleagues died on an exploratory trip undertaken with sled dogs.

After his return in 1908 and until World War I, Wegener was a lecturer in meteorology, applied astronomy and cosmic physics at the University of Marburg. His students and colleagues in Marburg particularly valued his ability to clearly and understandably explain even complex topics and current research findings without sacrificing precision. His lectures formed the basis of what was to become a standard textbook in meteorology, first written In 1909/1910: Thermodynamik der Atmosph?re (Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere), in which he incorporated many of the results of the Greenland expedition.

On 6 January 1912 he publicized his first thoughts about continental drift in a lecture at a session of the Geologischen Vereinigung at the Senckenberg-Museum, Frankfurt am Main and in three articles in the journal Petermanns Geographischen Mitteilungen.[5]

Second Greenland expedition

After a stopover in Iceland to purchase and test ponys as pack animals, the expedition arrived in Danmarkshavn. Even before the trip to the inland ice began the expedition was almost annihilated by a calving glacier. The Danish expedition leader, Johan Peter Koch, broke his leg when he fell into a glacier crevasse and spent months recovering in a sickbed. Wegener and Koch were the first to winter on the inland ice in northeast Greenland.[6] Inside their hut they drilled to a depth of 25 m with an auger. In summer 1913 the team crossed the inland ice, the four expedition participants covering a distance twice as long as Fridtjof Nansen's southern Greenland crossing in 1888. Only a few kilometers from the western Greenland settlement of Kangersuatsiaq the small team ran out of food while struggling to find their way through difficult glacial breakup terrain. But at the last moment, after the last pony and dog had been eaten, they were picked up at a fjord by the clergyman of Upernavik, who just happened to be visiting a remote congregation at the time.

Later in 1913 after his return Wegene r married Else K?ppen, the daughter of his former teacher and mentor, the meteorologist Wladimir K?ppen. The young pair lived in Marburg, where Wegner resumed his university lectureship.

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