03月22号托福阅读机经

2014年013月22日考试回忆

考试科目

难度

加试

综合点评

托福听力

略难

经典

综合难度略难。

LISTENING 1

类型

话题

Conversation

Office Hour

详细内容

1.老师表扬女生有关经济模型的presentation做得好

2.  然后说有项目去巴西和另一个欧洲国家。女生想去土耳其，因为她做的paper是关于土耳其的，但好像被老师拒绝了，女生继续说土耳其对她怎么好，还是被拒绝了。

3. 教授说巴西也不错，讲巴西咖啡对巴西经济非常重要。她说其他地方都去过，还是想去土耳其（出题）。然后女孩子还在争取。

话题拓展

办公时间基本考2类：论文&答疑解惑，往往涉及学术内容。这篇就是学生与教授讨论教学相关的论文，涉及部分经济学内容，本对话比较浅显，难度不大。

LISTENING 2

类型

话题

Lecture

Art History

一个画家

详细内容

1 意大利文艺复兴时，一个画家的贡献。

2 他是用story或者narrative来作画，一个点是人物的character

3 一个staging，说他narrative的方法注重比例，画肌肉以及三视图，似乎还和三维、立体、透视有关。

话题拓展

艺术类最高频即艺术史。当大家听到art history时，文章会有两种结果：一种讲某一类艺术史，另一种就是全文在讲一位艺术家。

艺术家往往以画家为主。

LISTENING 3

类型

话题

Lecture

Biology

细胞

详细内容

1 免疫细胞，免疫细胞很naïve，因为不能recognize入侵的病毒，等等。先说什么叫T Cell的一个东西，他是从thymus来的。

2 说了一大堆对他的介绍会影响人们的思维记忆等等。很重要的一个cell。然后说什么科学家对他研究发现，通过小白鼠的食物摄取量的多少来看他的变化。

3 一组小白鼠是食物给减少了30%，另一个组的小白鼠是普通摄入量，发现30%减少的小白鼠活得长了。

4 然后教授说人们对猴子也进行实验，让他们少吃点，结果少吃食物的猴子也比原来的普通摄入食物的猴子们活得长了。所以说TC细胞的多少，对人们的寿命也有研究价值。对于抗病能力的研究很强。

5 后面学生说，我们少吃点就能活得长寿了。老师说：你少吃30%的饭你愿意吗？我打赌你不愿意吧。男生问这一研究对人是不是也一样，教授说还不确定。

话题拓展

生命科学最高频的学科是动物学，往往是讲动物是如何通过长期适应环境而形成动物行为和生理结构，该讲座考的是动物的生理结构，即免疫细胞。可参考TPO12（L1--DNA）　

LISTENING 4

类型

话题

Conversation2

Service Encounter服务咨询

详细内容

1. 女生去帮室友拿package，结果需要室友自己来拿，所以不行。

2. 女生然后转入另一个主题，女生询问自己的校内mailbox不想要了。然后管理员说了一大堆不要注销，因为学校的所有重要的东西都是mail上发布的（出题）。

3. 女孩说不需要，她的教授有她的personal mail，所以她还是要注销，so easy，没什么事（出题）

4. 男的说，那么怎么给她学校的信息，她怎么能知道信息呢。女的说可以看Bulletin和news flyer也行（双选题）。最后男的让步，愿意给办理注销。

话题拓展

对于想拿高分甚至满分的同学， 对话尤其学生服务对话是绝对要抓紧的。一般结构清晰，提出问题—分析问题—解决问题。

LISTENING 5

类型

话题

Lecture

Antoropology

人类学

详细内容

1 北极人用ceramic pot做饭，这是个谜

2 两个方面：1.他们游牧需要移动，移动过程中pot容易碎（出题）

                      2. 他们的气候不适合制作这种pot，但是他们仍然使用这种pot，原因是当地人的饮食习惯，喜欢在屋里做饭。

话题拓展

社会科学在TPO中考的最多的是心理学和考古学（包括人类学）。

人类学往往考三个方面：怎么来的；怎么灭的；怎么发展的。

本次讲座为论证型，开头有谜团，中间分析，最后留意教授态度。

LISTENING 6

类型

话题

Lecture

Chemistry

化学

详细内容

1 讲两种mixture，homogeneous和heterogeneous

2 区别方法是有几种 phase，有的看上去只有一种phase，放大看就会发现有很多phase，比如dirty water，solid是hetero，可以通过过滤或其他方法分离。

3 salt water是homo之类，酒精和水混合以后就没有boundary了。讲两者不同是有表格题（问哪些是Homo,哪些是hetero，选项有盐水、脏水、烟雾等。

4 后面是讲到solution的过滤，蒸馏。最后教授说有时性质会被混合改变，比如盐水的结冰温度根据含盐量的不同而不同。熔点沸点也不同

话题拓展

自然科学最经典最高频的是天文和地质学。

本次讲座属于典型的A-B对立结构，两类terms，然后一一讲解，这时必然要考到相同点、不同点。注意可能出到表格题。

CF：TPO1（Marmot）；TPO5（Folk & Fairy tales）TPO 13（Poetry）

考试日期：2013年03月22日

Reading Passage 1

Topic:

Child play的发展阶段

文章内容回顾：

讲children play的几个阶段，从一开始吃手指到后来开始function play，后来说他们玩的pretended play对他们有什么影响什么的，good effect

难度分析：

本文属心理学文章，话题涉及儿童玩耍的几个阶段，从机经回忆来看，应该涉及到重要阶段、functional阶段和pretend阶段。本文理解重点在于把握不同阶段玩耍的特征，以及对儿童产生的影响，在TPO中有类似文章：Role of play in development。

相关背景内容：

In young children, play is frequently associated with cognitive development and socialization. Play that promotes learning and recreation often incorporates toys, props, tools or other playmates. Play In young children, play is frequently associated with cognitive development and socialization. Play that promotes learning and recreation often incorporates toys, props, tools or other playmates. Play can consist of an amusing, pretend or imaginary activity alone or with another. Some forms of play are rehearsals or trials for later life events, such as "play fighting", pretend social encounters (such as parties with dolls), or flirting. Modern findings in neuroscience suggest that play promotes flexibility of mind, including adaptive practices such as discovering multiple ways to achieve a desired result, or creative ways to improve or reorganize a given situation (Millar, 1967; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000).

As children get older, they engage in board games, video games and computer play, and in this context the word gameplay is used to describe the concept and theory of play and its relationship to rules and game design. In their book, Rules of Play, researchers Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman outline 18 schemas for games, using them to define "play", "interaction" and "design" formally for behaviorists. Similarly, in his book Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, game researcher and theorist Jesper Juul explores the relationship between real rules and unreal scenarios in play, such as winning or losing a game in the real world when played together with real-world friends, but doing so by slaying a dragon in the fantasy world presented in the shared video game.

Learning through play has been long recognized as a critical aspect of childhood and child development. Some of the earliest studies of play started in the 1890s with G. Stanley Hall, the father of the child study movement that sparked an interest in the developmental, mental and behavioral world of babies and children. Play also promotes healthy development of parent-child bonds, establishing social, emotional and cognitive developmental milestones that help them relate to others, manage stress, and learn resiliency.

Modern research in the field of affective neuroscience (the neural mechanisms of emotion) has uncovered important links between role play and neurogenesis in the brain. For example, researcher Roger Caillois used the word ilinx to describe the momentary disruption of perception that comes from forms of physical play that disorient the senses, especially balance.

In addition, evolutionary psychologists have begun to explore the phylogenetic relationship between higher intelligence in humans and its relationship to play, i.e., the relationship of play to the progress of whole evolutionary groups as opposed to the psychological implications of play to a specific individual.

Reading Passage 2

Topic:

地球结构

文章内容回顾：

讲地球结构，说科学家没法直接探测地球岩层的成分，然后说各种实验方法，比如研究矿物质和火山爆发，还有通过一种势力仪来探测温度。

难度分析：

本文属地质学相关文章，从机经来年地，涉及到地球构造（crust, upper mantle, lower mantle，the core），以及地质研究方法，在ＴＰＯ里有类似方法研究类题材文章（Methods of studying ifant perception），此类文章理解的重点在于不同研究方法的运用、发现、局限性等。

相关背景内容：

Although the interior of the Earth is not directly visible, scientists can use a variety of methods to create a profile of the Earth’s crust, mantle and core. Tracking seismic waves, studying the behavior the Earth and other planets in space, and analyzing rock and mineral samples are key strategies for exploring the composition and behavior of the Earth’s deep core.

The Earth’s interior

Below the surface, the Earth’s interior consists of three main parts: the crust, the mantle and the core. The curst, which is most accessible for study, includes the Earth’s surface and the tectonic plates, which are in constant motion, creating earthquakes and new geological features. Below the crust lies the mantle, composed of silicate rocks which are so bot they can liqufy whle moving toward the crust and dirve seismic activity. At the center of the plane, the core consists fo two parts, a liquid outer core and a hot, solid inner core composed primairly of iromn.

Seismic Tomography

Much information about the Earth’s interior comes from the study of seismic activity. Sophisticated instruments placed deep in the earth track seismic waves, which vary in speed and structure in different parts of the Earth’s mantle and core. For examplek the outer core transmits few shear waves, a type of seismic movement, suggesting that it is liquid rather than solid. Recent advances in seismic tomogrphy of the Earth allow reserachers to create computer generated 3D images of the Earth’s interior.

The Earth in Space

Over 300 years ago, sir Issac Newton calculated the Earth’s core density by observing the movement of planets and the force of gravity. His observations remain largelyu correct today, and monitoring of the Erath in space, as wekl as the behjavior of the moon and planets, continues to provide information about the relative density of the Earth’s core and its  composition. The study of neighboring phanets such as Mars also provides clues about the nature of Earth’s formation and the behavior of its deep inner parts.

Rock and Mineral Analyses

Laboratory analyses of rock and mineral samples form the Earth’s crust and surface, as well ad those obtained from deep probes, provide important information about the temperature and composition of the deeper layers of the Earth’s interior. Experiments on rocks at high temperatures and pressures provide clues about the behavior of rocks and linerals in the mantle and core.

Analyses of lava samples and volcanic rock reveal information about the composition and behavior of various of rock, liquid or solid, at various depths in the Earth’s interior.

Reading Passage 3

Title:

大猩猩

文章内容回顾：

版本一是类似于去年12月15日的文章（大猩猩），就是说了一个机，好像是ASL，他们就训练大猩猩学习手势，并让他们模仿训练者，一共说了两个大猩猩，然后反驳了之前的某一个结论。

难度分析：

本文属于语言学和心理学跨界题材，重复2013年12月15日阅读。主要涉及的是Chimpanzee学习语言的能力，背景知道不算生僻。

相关背景内容：

Project Nim was an attempt to go further than Project Washoe. Terrace and his colleagues aimed to use more thorough experimental techniques, and the intellectual discipline of the experimental analysis of behavior, so that the linguistic abilities of the apes could be put on a more secure footing.

Roger Fouts wrote:

Since 98.7% of the DNA in humans and chimps is identical, some scientists (but not Noam Chomsky) believed that a chimp raised in a human family, and using ASL (American Sign Language), would shed light on the way language is acquired and used by humans. Project Nim, headed by behavioral psychologist Herbert Terrace at Columbia University, was conceived in the early 1970s as a challenge to Chomsky's thesis that only humans have language.

Attention was particularly focused on Nim's ability to make different responses to different sequences of signs and to emit different sequences in order to communicate different meanings. However, the results, according to Fouts, were not as impressive as had been reported from the Washoe project. Terrace, however, was skeptical of Project Washoe and, according to the critics, went to great lengths to discredit it.

While Nim did learn 125 signs, Terrace concluded that he had not acquired anything the researchers were prepared to designate worthy of the name "language" (as defined by Noam Chomsky) although he had learned to repeat his trainers' signs in appropriate contexts. Language is defined as a "doubly articulated" system, in which signs are formed for objects and states and then combined syntactically, in ways that determine how their meanings will be understood. For example, "man bites dog" and "dog bites man" use the same set of words but because of their ordering will be understood by speakers of English as denoting very different meanings.

One of Terrace's colleagues, Laura-Ann Petitto, estimated that with more standard criteria, Nim's true vocabulary count was closer to 25 than 125. However, other students who cared for Nim longer than Petitto disagreed with her and with the way that Terrace conducted his experiment. Critics assert that Terrace used his analysis to destroy the movement of ape-language research. Terrace argued that none of the chimps were using language, because they could learn signs but could not form them syntactically as language, as described above.

Terrace and his colleagues concluded that the chimpanzee did not show any meaningful sequential behavior that rivaled human grammar. Nim's use of language was strictly pragmatic, as a means of obtaining an outcome, unlike a human child's, which can serve to generate or express meanings, thoughts or ideas. There was nothing Nim could be taught that could not equally well be taught to a pigeon using the principles of operant conditioning. The researchers therefore questioned claims made on behalf of Washoe, and argued that the apparently impressive results may have amounted to nothing more than a "Clever Hans" effect, not to mention a relatively informal experimental approach.

Critics of primate linguistic studies include Thomas Sebeok, American semiotician and investigator of nonhuman communication systems, who wrote:

In my opinion, the alleged language experiments with apes divide into three groups: one, outright fraud; two, self-deception; three, those conducted by Terrace. The largest class by far is the middle one.

Sebeok also made pointed comparisons of Washoe with Clever Hans. Some evolutionary psychologists, in effect agreeing with Chomsky, argue that the apparent impossibility of teaching language to animals is indicative that the ability to use language is an innately human development.

Project Nim, a documentary film by James Marsh about the Nim study, explores the story (and the wealth of archival footage) to consider ethical issues, the emotional experiences of the trainers and the chimpanzee, and the deeper issues the experiment raised.

2014年03月22日托福综合写作分析

阅读部分

听力部分

科学家发现了存在200 million years ago的蜂巢，对bees是否存在于这个时间，文章给出3个skeptical

听力持反对意见，理由如下：

1. 没有蜜蜂本身的化石。

1.因为当时没有一种特定的树存在，这种树分泌的一种液体有利于蜜蜂身体的preserve，所以不是不存在，只是没办法保存。

2. 那时没有flower供蜜蜂生存

2.蜜蜂当时可以靠non-flowere plants such as pine tree为食，现在的蜜蜂则依靠花蜜，实际是对植物evolution的adaptation。

3. 发现的蜂巢跟现在比不够detail，可能是别的动物的巢

3. chemical evidence证明蜜蜂在筑巢时，会加入一种特殊的化学成分，来防止蜂巢被水给淹了，而对发现的古代蜂巢的研究，发现了相同的化学成分。。

2014年03月22日独立综合写作分析

题目

Do you agree that young people used to let their parents make decisions for them but nowadays young people are more likely to make their own decisions.

简析

本题重复2012年10月27日北美考题。

年轻人过去习惯让父母帮忙做决定；但现在都倾向于自己做决定。

参考思路

1.现在年轻人不依赖父母可以说是科技进步的结果，科技的进步为父母提供了便利，孩子们有机会早早地就养成独立的习惯。而过去父母很多时候必须亲自陪着孩子完成许多事情。

2. 时代的发展进步，年轻人的生活有了更多的选择，而这些选择是他们父母年轻时代时所没有的，所以很多时候孩子 们也必须学会自己独立思考，进而自己做决定。

3. 还是有很多情况年轻人是没办法自己做决定的，需要父母的建议，才能避免错误。

考试日期：2014年03月22日

Task 1

Title:

Talk about a friend of your, explain why this friend is important to you.

解题思路：

解析：

可以转换为经典口语题：Describe a person that you admire. 甚至可以套进3-15的模板。说这个朋友之所以important，是因为她/他：

1. Responsibility; patience

2. very active; communicative skills而这正是你所admire的.

参考答案

An important friend that i especially want to mention is a roomate who influences me the most.

First of all, being with her, I learned to be responsible and patient with others……

Besides, she is active and communicative. I learned many useful interpersonal skills from her.

Task 2

Title:

Some students like to take notes in class, others prefer to mainly listen to the teacher. Which do you prefer? Explain why.

解题思路：

参考答案

I prefer to take lots of notes in class for the following reasons.

First, taking notes helps me concentrate. It’s easier to kep up with the lecture when I’m constantly taking notes. I’ll get distracted if I don’t. especially when I didn’t get a good night sleep form the night before taking notes keeps me from nodding off.

Second, notes are helpful when I review class materials. I don’t have a great memory, I forget hthings all the time. Class note is a record of what’s important. It rmins me of the things that might be in tests.

Task 3

Reading

Listening

Notice: the universtiy is going to add a kitchen to the students' dormitory building

Reason 1: students can practice their cooking skills.

Reason 2: students can benefit from it.

The man disagrees

Reason 1: spare room in dorms should be reserved for TVs and stuff to entertain friends.

Reason 2: students are way too busy to study recipes, not to mention cook for themselves, the dorms are either for relaxing or for studying.

Task 4

Reading

Listening

Definition: false signaling is when an animal sends out misleading signals to attract other animals.

Female moths usually release a chemical smell to attract and lead male moths, but spiders can send out a similar signal to deceive and mislead male moths.

Task 5

问题：

Problem: the woman has to cary her bike up and down the stairs and she’s tired of it

解决措施：

Solution 1: leave it outside

(it’s not good for the bike, especially when it rains outside.)

Solution 2: put it at her friend’s who lives on the 4th floor.

(her firned has a different schedule and she may disturb her friend)

Task 6

Title

Advocacy and direct service are two ways non-profit organizations make a contribution to the society.

例子：

Eg 1：advocacy means the organizations convince and motivate people to contribute, like they put an ad on newspapers and TV to call on people on people to help build the playground.

Eg 2: direct service means the organizaitions contribute directly, for example they collect money and design all by themselves instead of asking for help from others.