考试日期：

2017年3月4日

Reading Passage 1  动物

Title

Red Worm (新)

Question types:

判断6

填空7

文章大意

Red worm-一种动物，作为大自然界的一种材料，比人造的要好

相似阅读文章

 Many animals seem able to treat their  illnesses themselves. Humans way have a thing or two to learn from them.

A   For the past decade Dr Engel, a lecturer m environmental sciences at  Britain’s Open  University, has been collating examples of self-medicating behavior in wild  animals. She recently published a book on the subject. In a talk at the  Edinburgh Science Festival earlier this month, she explained that the idea  that animals can treat themselves has been regarded with some skepticism by  her

colleagues in the past. But a growing  number of animal behaviourists now think that wild animals can and do deal  with their own medical needs.

B   One example of self-medication was discovered in 1987. Michael Huffman  and Mohamedi Seifu, working in the Mahale Mountains National Park in  Tanzania, noticed that local chimpanzees suffering from intestinal worms  would dose themselves with the pith of a plant called Veronia. This plant  produces poisonous chemicals called terpenes. Its pith contains a strong  enough concentration to kill gut parasites, but not so strong as to kill  chimps (nor people, for that matter; locals use the pith for the same  purpose). Given that the plant is known locally as “goat-killer”, however, it seems that not all

animals are as smart as chimps and humans.  Some consume it indiscriminately,and succumb.

C   Since the Veronia-eating chimps were discovered, more evidence has  emerged suggesting that animals often eat things for medical rather than  nutritional reasons. Many species, for example, consume dirt-a behaviour  known as geophagy ( 食土癖). Historically, the preferred explanation was that soil supplies  minerals such as salt. But geophagy occurs in areas where the  heart is not a useful source of minerals,  and also in places where minerals can be more easily obtained from certain  plants that are known to be rich in them. Clearly, the animals must be  getting something else out of eating earth.

D   The current belief is that soil-and particularly the clay in it-helps  to detoxify the defensive poisons that some plants produce in an attempt to  prevent themselves from being eaten. Evidence for the detoxifying nature of  clay came in 1999, from an experiment carried out on macaws by James Gilardi  and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis. Macaws eat seeds  containing alkaloids, a group of chemicals that has some notoriously toxic members,  such as strychnine. In the wild, the birds are frequently seen perched on  eroding riverbanks eating clay. Dr Gilardi fed one group of macaws a mixture  of a harmless alkaloid and clay, and a second group just the alkaloid.  Several hours later, the macaws that had eaten the clay had 60% less alkaloid  in their bloodstreams than those that had not, suggesting that the hypothesis  is correct.

E    Other observations also support the idea that clay is detoxifying.  Towards the tropics the amount of toxic compounds in plants increases-and so  does the amount of earth eaten by herbivores. Elephants lick clay from mud  holes all year round, except in September when they are bingeing on fruit  which, because it has evolved to be eaten, is not toxic. And the addition of  clay to the diets of domestic cattle increases the amount of nutrients that  they can absorb from their food by 10-20%.

F  A  third instance of animal self-medication is the use of mechanical scours to  get rid of gut parasites. In 1972 Richard Wrangham, a researcher at the Gombs  Stream Reserve in Tanzania, noticed that chimpanzees were eating the leaves  of a tree called Aspilia. The chimps chose the leaves carefully by testing  them in their mouths. Having chosen a leaf, a chimp would fold it into a fan  and

swallow it. Some of the chimps were noticed  wrinkling their noses as they swallowed these leaves, suggesting the  experience was unpleasant. Later, undigested leaves were found on the forest  floor.

G  Dr  Wrangham rightly guessed that the leaves had a medicinal purpose this was,  indeed, one of the earliest interpretations of a behaviour pattern as  self-medication. However, he guessed wrong about what the mechanism was. His  (and everybody else’s) assumption was that Aspilia contained a drug, and this sparked  more than two decades of phytochemical research to try to find out what  chemical the chimps were after.

But by the  1990s, chimps across Africa had been seen swallowing the leaves of 19  different species that seemed to have few suitable chemicals in common. The  drug hypothesis was looking more and more dubious.

H  It  was Dr Huffman who got to the bottom of the problem. He did so by watching  what came out of the chimps, rather than concentrating on what went in. He  found that the egested leaves were full of intestinal worms. The factor  common to all 19 species of leaves swallowed by the chimps was that they were  covered with microscopic hooks. These caught the worms and dragged them from  their lodgings.

I   Following that observation, Dr Engel is now particularly excited about  how knowledge of the way that animals look after themselves could be used to  improve the health of livestock. People might also be able to learn a thing  or two-and may, indeed, already have done so. Geophagy, for example, is a  common behaviour in many parts of the world. The medical stalls in African  markets frequently sell tablets made of different sorts of clays, appropriate  to different medical conditions.

J   Africans brought to the Americas as slaves continued this tradition,  which gave their owners one more excuse to affect to despise them. Yet, as Dr  Engel points out, Rwandan mountain gorillas eat a type of clay rather similar  to kaolinitethe main ingredient of many patent medicines sold over the  counter in the West for digestive complaints. Dirt can sometimes be good for  you, and to be “as sick as  a parrot” may, after  all, be a state to be desired.

参考答案

1. FALES

2. TRUE

3. NOT GIVEN

4. TRUE

5. TRUE

6.FALSE

7. Light

8. Shells

9. Histidine

10. Minerialisation

11. Gills

12. Fangs

13. Aircraft

难度分析

第一篇中出现俩个常规有序题，难度尚可。但是学生对于这一题材的文章可能不是那么熟悉。之前学生接触的文章多为纯动物类或者纯科技类，但是这篇将动物与有机材料相结合，会有一定难度。

Reading Passage 2   植物

Title:

When the tulip  bubble bursts (旧)

Question types:

Matching 5

T/F/NG 5

填空 3

文章大意

荷兰的tulip mania，涉及到17世纪荷兰郁金香球茎的投机的狂潮，说17世纪郁金香用于交易投机然后崩盘和现在对高科技股票的不理智投资。

参考原文及题目：

A Tulips are  spring-blooming perennials that grow from bulbs. Depending on the species,  tulip plants can grow as short as 4 inches (250px) or as high as 28 inches  (1775px). The tulip’s large flowers usually bloom on scapes or sub-scapose stems that  lack bracts. Most tulips produce only one flower per stem, but a few species  bear multiple flowers on their scapes (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica). The showy,  generally cup or star-shaped tulip flower has three petals and threesepals, which  are often termed tepals because they are nearly identical. These six tepals  are often marked on the interior surface near the bases with darker  colorings. Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue  (several tulips with “blue” in the  name have a faint violet hue).A Long before anyone ever heard of Qualcomm,  CMGI, Cisco Systems, or the other high-tech stocks that have soared during  the current bull market, there was Semper Augustus. Both more prosaic and  more sublime (崇高的) than  any stock or bond, it was a tulip of extraordinary beauty, its midnight-blue  petal stopped by a band of pure white and accented with crimson flares. To  denizens of 17th century Holland, little was as desirable.

B Around 1624,  the Amsterdam man who owned the only dozen specimens was offered 3,000  guilders (荷兰盾) for one  bulb. While there’s no accurate way to render that in today’s greenbacks, the sum was roughly  equal to the annual income of a wealthy merchant. (A few years later,  Rembrandt received about half that amount for painting The Night Watch.) Yet  the bulb’s owner,  whose name is now lost to history, nixed the offer.

C Who was  crazier, the tulip lover who refused to sell for a small fortune or the one  who was willing to splurge. That’s a question that springs to mind after reading Tulip mania: The  Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions. It aroused  by British journalist Mike Dash. In recent years, as investors have  intentionally forgotten everything they learned in Investing 101 in order to  load up on unproved, unprofitable dot-com issues, tulip mania (狂热) has been invoked frequently. In this concise, artfully written  account, Dash tells the real history behind the buzzword (流星鱼) and in doing so, offers a  cautionary tale for our times.

D The Dutch were  not the first to go gaga over the tulip. Long before the first tulip bloomed  in Europe-Bavaria, it turns out, in 1559-the flower had enchanted the  Persians and bewitched the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. It was in Holland,  however, that the passion for tulips found its most fertile ground, for  reasons that had little to do with horticulture.

E Holland in the  early 17th century was embarking on its Golden Age. Resources that had just a  few years earlier gone toward fighting for independence from Spain now flowed  into commerce. Amsterdam merchants were at the center of the lucrative East  Indies trade, where a single voyage could yield profits of 400%. They  displayed their success by erecting grand estates surrounded by flower gardens.  The Dutch population seemed torn by two contradictory impulses: a horror of  living beyond one’s means and the love of a long shot.

F Enter the  tulip. “It is  impossible to comprehend the tulip mania without understanding just how  different tulips were from every other flower known to horticulturists in the  17th century,”says Dash.  The colors they exhibited were more intense and more concentrated than those  of ordinary plants.”Despite the outlandish (奇异的)prices commanded by rare bulbs, ordinary tulips were sold by the  pound. Around 1630, however, a new type of tulip fancier appeared, lured by  tales of fat profits. These “florists,” or professional tulip traders, sought out flower lovers and  speculators alike. But if the supply of tulip buyers grew quickly, the supply  of bulbs did not. The tulip was a

conspirator (阴谋者) in the supply squeeze : It  takes seven years to grow one from seed. And while bulbs can produce two or  three clones, or “offsets,” annually, the mother bulb only lasts a few years.

G Bulb prices  rose steadily throughout the 1630s, as ever more speculators (投机者) wedged (锲入) into the market. Weavers and  farmers mortgaged whatever they could to raise cash to begin trading. In  1633, a farmhouse in Hoorn changed hands for three rare bulbs. By 1636 any  tulip-even bulbs recently considered garbage-could be sold off, often for  hundreds of guilders. A futures market for bulbs existed, and tulip traders  could be found conducting their business in hundreds of Dutch taverns. Tulip  mania reached its peak during the winter of 1636-1637, when some bulbs were  changing hands ten times in a day. The zenith came early that winter, at an  auction to benefit seven orphans whose only asset was 70 fine tulips left by  their father. One, a rare Violetten Admirael vanned Enkhuizen bulb that was  about to split in two, sold for 5,200 guilders, the all-time record. All  told, the flowers brought in nearly 53,000 guilders.

H Soon after,  the tulip market crashed utterly, spectacularly. It began in Haarlem, at a  routine bulb auction when, for the first time, the greater fool refused to  show up and pay. Within days, the panic had spread across the country.  Despite the efforts of traders to prop up demand, the market for tulips  evaporated. Flowers that had commanded 5,000 guilders a few weeks before now  fetched one-hundredth that amount. Tulip mania is not without flaws. Dash  dwells too long on the tulip’s migration from Asia to Holland. But he does a service with this  illuminating, accessible account of incredible financial folly. I Tulip mania  differed in one crucial aspect from the dot-com craze that grips our  attention today: Even at its height, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, well  established in 1630, wouldn’t touch tulips. “The speculation in tulip bulbs always existed at the margins of  Dutch economic life,” Dash writes. After the market crashed, a compromise was brokered  that let most traders settle their debts for a fraction of their liability.  The overall fallout on the Dutch economy was negligible. Will we say the same  when Wall Street’s current obsession finally runs its course?

参考答案

Questions 14-18

The reading  Passage has seven paragraphs A-I

Which paragraph  contains the following information?

Write the correct  letter A-I, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet

14 Difference between  tulip and high-tech shares

15 Spread of tulip  before 17th century

16 Indication of  money offered for rare bulb in 17th century

17 Tulip was  treated as money in Holland

18 Comparison made  between tulip and other plants

Questions 19-23

Do the following statements  agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 19-23 on  your answer sheet, write

TRUE  if the statement agrees with the  information

FALSE  if the statement contradicts the  information

NOT GIVEN  if there is no information on this

19 In 1624, all  the tulip collection belonged to a man in Amsterdam.

20 Tulip was first  planted in Holland according to this passage.

21 Popularity of  Tulip in Holland was much higher than any other countries in

17th century.

22 Holland was the  wealthiest country in the world in 17th century.

23 From 1630,  Amsterdam Stock Exchange started to regulate Tulips exchange market.

Questions 24-26

Summary

Complete the  following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no more than  two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in  boxes 24-27 on your answer sheet.

Dutch concentrated  on gaining independence by 24 against Spain in the early

17th century,  consequently spare resources entered the area of 25. Prosperous traders  demonstrated their status by building 26 in surroundings. Attracted by the  success of profit on tulip, traders kept looking for and speculator for sale.

答案：

14 I

15 D

16 B

17 G

18 F

19 TRUE

20 FALSE

21 TRUE

22 NOT GIVEN

23 FALSE

24 fighting

25 commerce

26 estates

(答案仅供参考)

难度分析

本篇文章难度高于第一篇文章。文章三种题型中俩种常规顺序题，但是出现了学生最头痛的信息包含题。虽然文章为考生熟悉的题材，但是题目搭配对于学生来说还是比较难。

剑桥推荐阅读

剑10Test 4Passage1

Reading Passage 3   艺术

Title:

Art and Artists

Question Types

配对  5

填空  5

判断  4

文章大意

文章主要介绍了画家以及他们的作品。

参考答案

27. H

28. D

29. E

30. F

31. B  Alpine hills

32. C.  R ’s son

33. F.  Elephant

34. H.  Horse

35. D  ’s mother

36. A  village scene

37.  Truthful

38.  Shock

39.  Understand

40.  Interpretation

（答案仅供参考）

难度分析

本篇文章还是以配对题作为主打题型，看似比较难，但是由于其搭配细节配对题，难度稍微降低。人名找观点这一类配对题可以通过人名进行快速定位找出答案。难点还是在于信息包含题，做这一篇文章学生需要把控的合理的做题顺序。

难度分析

本次雅思阅读考试出现了两篇“人见人烦”段落细节配对题，时间较为紧张，并且第二篇文章的填空和判断题、有交叉做题，难度较大，但是填空题总体难度适宜。而且填空题每篇都有，难度不大，需要引起注意。总体难度第一篇简单，第二、三篇难，考生要灵活处理，先做自己顺手的题型，和看的懂文章。题材涉及生物类、艺术类，跟以往一样，平时需要积累相关词汇。