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托福阅读真题1
PASSAGE 1
By the mid-nineteenth century, the term icebox had entered the American language, but icewas still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice tradegrew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by someforward-looking city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1861-1865),as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880, halfthe ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston andChicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new householdconvenience, the icebox, a precursor of the modern refrigerator, had been invented.
Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose. In the early nineteenthcentury, the knowledge of the physics of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration,was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the icefrom melting was of course mistaken, for it was the melting of the ice that performed the cooling.Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which kept theice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve thedelicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox.
But as early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the righttrack. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the villageof Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport hisbutter to market, he found that customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs ofhis competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-poundbricks. One advantage of his icebox, Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have totravel to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.
1. What does the passage mainly discuss?
(A) The influence of ice on the diet
(B) The development of refrigeration
(C) The transportation of goods to market
(D) Sources of ice in the nineteenth century
2. According to the passage , when did the word icebox become part of the language of the
United States?
(A) in 1803
(B) sometime before 1850
(C) during the civil war
(D) near the end of the nineteenth century
3. The phrase forward-looking in line 4 is closest in meaning to
(A) progressive
(B) popular
(C) thrifty
(D) well-established
4. The author mentions fish in line 4 because
(A) many fish dealers also sold ice
(B) fish was shipped in refrigerated freight cars
(C) fish dealers were among the early commercial users of ice
(D) fish was not part of the ordinary person's diet before the invention of the icebox
5. The word it in line 5 refers to
(A) fresh meat
(B) the Civil War
(C) ice
(D) a refrigerator
6. According to the passage , which of the following was an obstacle to the development of the
icebox?
(A) Competition among the owners of refrigerated freight cars
(B) The lack of a network for the distribution of ice
(C) The use of insufficient insulation
(D) Inadequate understanding of physics
7. The word rudimentary in line 12 is closest in meaning to
(A) growing
(B) undeveloped
(C) necessary
(D) uninteresting
8. According to the information in the second paragraph, an ideal icebox would
(A) completely prevent ice from melting
(B) stop air from circulating
(C) allow ice to melt slowly
(D) use blankets to conserve ice
9. The author describes Thomas Moore as having been on the right track (lines 18-19) to indicate
that
(A) the road to the market passed close to Moore's farm
(B) Moore was an honest merchant
(C) Moore was a prosperous farmer
(D) Moore's design was fairly successful
10. According to the passage , Moore's icebox allowed him to
(A) charge more for his butter
(B) travel to market at night
(C) manufacture butter more quickly
(D) produce ice all year round
11. The produce mentioned in line 25 could include
(A) iceboxes
(B) butter
(C) ice
(D) markets
PASSAGE 1 BBACC DBCDA B
托福阅读真题2
PASSAGE 2
The geology of the Earth's surface is dominated by the particular properties of water. Presenton Earth in solid, liquid, and gaseous states, water is exceptionally reactive. It dissolves,transports, and precipitates many chemical compounds and is constantly modifying the face ofthe Earth.
Evaporated from the oceans, water vapor forms clouds, some of which are transported bywind over the continents. Condensation from the clouds provides the essential agent ofcontinental erosion: rain. Precipitated onto the ground, the water trickles down to form brooks,streams, and rivers, constituting what are called the hydrographic network. This immensepolarized network channels the water toward a single receptacle: an ocean. Gravity dominatesthis entire step in the cycle because water tends to minimize its potential energy by running fromhigh altitudes toward the reference point, that is, sea level.
The rate at which a molecule of water passes though the cycle is not random but is a measureof the relative size of the various reservoirs. If we define residence time as the average time for awater molecule to pass through one of the three reservoirs — atmosphere, continent, and ocean— we see that the times are very different. A water molecule stays, on average, eleven days inthe atmosphere, one hundred years on a continent and forty thousand years in the ocean. Thislast figure shows the importance of the ocean as the principal reservoir of the hydrosphere butalso the rapidity of water transport on the continents.
A vast chemical separation process takes places during the flow of water over the continents.Soluble ions such as calcium, sodium, potassium, and some magnesium are dissolved andtransported. Insoluble ions such as aluminum, iron, and silicon stay where they are and form thethin, fertile skin of soil on which vegetation can grow. Sometimes soils are destroyed andtransported mechanically during flooding. The erosion of the continents thus results from twoclosely linked and interdependent processes, chemical erosion and mechanical erosion. Theirrespective interactions and efficiency depend on different factors.
1. The word modifying in line 4 is closest in meaning to
(A) changing
(B) traveling
(C) describing
(D) destroying
2. The word which in line 5 refers to
(A) clouds
(B) oceans
(C) continents
(D) compounds
3. According to the passage , clouds are primarily formed by water
(A) precipitating onto the ground
(B) changing from a solid to a liquid state
(C) evaporating from the oceans
(D) being carried by wind
4. The passage suggests that the purpose of the hydrographic network (line 8) is to
(A) determine the size of molecules of water
(B) prevent soil erosion caused by flooding
(C) move water from the Earth's surface to the oceans
(D) regulate the rate of water flow from streams and rivers
5. What determines the rate at which a molecule of water moves through the cycle, as discussed
in the third paragraph?
(A) The potential energy contained in water
(B) The effects of atmospheric pressure on chemical compounds
(C) The amounts of rainfall that fall on the continents
(D) The relative size of the water storage areas
6. The word rapidity in line 19 is closest in meaning to
(A) significance
(B) method
(C) swiftness
(D) reliability
7. The word they in line 24 refers to
(A) insoluble ions
(B) soluble ions
(C) soils
(D) continents
8. All of the following are example of soluble ions EXCEPT
(A) magnesium
(B) iron
(C) potassium
(D) calcium
9. The word efficiency in line 27 is closest in meaning to
(A) relationship
(B) growth
(C) influence
(D) effectiveness
PASSAGE 2 AACCD CABD
托福阅读真题3
PASSAGE 3
The Native Americans of northern California were highly skilled at basketry, using the reeds,grasses, barks, and roots they found around them to fashion articles of all sorts and sizes — notonly trays, containers, and cooking pots, but hats, boats, fish traps, baby carriers, and ceremonialobjects.
Of all these experts, none excelled the Pomo — a group who lived on or near the coast duringthe 1800's, and whose descendants continue to live in parts of the same region to this day. Theymade baskets three feet in diameter and others no bigger than a thimble. The Pomo people weremasters of decoration. Some of their baskets were completely covered with shell pendants;others with feathers that made the baskets' surfaces as soft as the breasts of birds. Moreover, thePomo people made use of more weaving techniques than did their neighbors. Most groups madeall their basketwork by twining — the twisting of a flexible horizontal material, called a weft,around stiffer vertical strands of material, the warp. Others depended primarily on coiling — aprocess in which a continuous coil of stiff material is held in the desired shape with tightwrapping of flexible strands. Only the Pomo people used both processes with equal ease andfrequency. In addition, they made use of four distinct variations on the basic twining process,often employing more than one of them in a single article.
Although a wide variety of materials was available, the Pomo people used only a few. Thewarp was always made of willow, and the most commonly used weft was sedge root, a woodyfiber that could easily be separated into strands no thicker than a thread. For color, the Pomopeople used the bark of redbud for their twined work and dyed bullrush root for black in coiledwork. Though other materials were sometimes used, these four were the staples in their finestbasketry.
If the basketry materials used by the Pomo people were limited, the designs were amazinglyvaried. Every Pomo basketmaker knew how to produce from fifteen to twenty distinct patternsthat could be combined in a number of different ways.
1. What best distinguished Pomo baskets
from baskets of other groups?
(A) The range of sizes, shapes, and designs
(B) The unusual geometric
(C) The absence of decoration
(D) The rare materials used
2. The word fashion in line 2 is closest in meaning to
(A) maintain
(B) organize
(C) trade
(D) create
3. The Pomo people used each of the following materials to decorate baskets EXCEPT
(A) shells
(B) feathers
(C) leaves
(D) bark
4. What is the author's main point in the second paragraph?
(A) The neighbors of the Pomo people tried to improve on the Pomo basket weaving techniques.
(B) The Pomo people were the most skilled basket weavers in their region.
(C) The Pomo people learned their basket weaving techniques from other Native Americans.
(D) The Pomo baskets have been handed down for generations.
5. The word others in line 9 refers to
(A) masters
(B) baskets
(C) pendants
(D) surfaces
6. According to the passage , a weft is a
(A) tool for separating sedge root
(B) process used for coloring baskets
(C) pliable maternal woven around the warp
(D) pattern used to decorate baskets
7. According to the passage , what did the Pomo people use as the warp in their baskets?
(A) bullrush
(B) willow
(C) sedge
(D) redbud
8. The word article in line 17 is close in meaning to
(A) decoration
(B) shape
(C) design
(D) object
9. According to the passage . The relationship between redbud and twining is most similar to the
relationship between
(A) bullrush and coiling
(B) weft and warp
(C) willow and feathers
(D) sedge and weaving
10. The word staples in line 23 is closest in meaning to
(A) combinations
(B) limitations
(C) accessories
(D) basic elements
11. The word distinct in lime 26 is closest in meaning to
(A) systematic
(B) beautiful
(C) different
(D) compatible
12. Which of the following statements about Pomo baskets can be best inferred from the
passage ?
(A) Baskets produced by other Native Americans were less varied in design than those of the
Pomo people.
(B) Baskets produced by Pomo weavers were primarily for ceremonial purposes.
(C) There were a very limited number of basketmaking materials available to the Pomo people.
(D) The basketmaking production of the Pomo people has increased over the years.
PASSAGE 3 BDCBB CBDAD CA