托福阅读理解真题

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托福阅读真题1

Glass fibers have a long history. The Egyptians made coarse fibers by 1600 B.C., and fibers survive as decorations on Egyptian pottery dating back to 1375 B.C. During the Renaissance (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries A.D.), glassmakers from Venice used glass fibers to decorate the surfaces of plain glass vessels. However, glassmakers guarded their secrets so carefully that no one wrote about glass fiber production until the early seventeenth century.

The eighteenth century brought the invention of spun glass fibers. R é ne-Antoine de R é a French scientist, tried to make artificial feathers from glass. He made fibers by rotating a wheel through a pool of molten glass, pulling threads of glass where the hot thick liquid stuck to the wheel. His fibers were short and fragile, but he predicted that spun glass fibers as thin as spider silk would be flexible and could be woven into fabric.

By the start of the nineteenth century, glassmakers learned how to make longer, stronger fibers by pulling them from molten glass with a hot glass tube. Inventors wound the cooling end of the thread around a yarn reel, then turned the reel rapidly to pull more fiber from the molten glass. Wandering tradespeople began to spin glass fibers at fairs, making decorations and ornaments as novelties for collectors, but this material was of little practical use; the fibers were brittle, ragged, and no longer than ten feet, the circumference of the largest reels. By the mid-1870's, however, the best glass fibers were finer than silk and could be woven into fabrics or assembled into imitation ostrich feathers to decorate hats. Cloth of white spun glass resembled silver; fibers drawn from yellow-orange glass looked golden.

Glass fibers were little more than a novelty until the 1930's, when their thermal and electrical insulating properties were appreciated and methods for producing continuous filaments were developed. In the modern manufacturing process, liquid glass is fed directly from a glass-melting furnace into a bushing, a receptacle pierced with hundreds of fine nozzles, from which the liquid issues in fine streams. As they solidify, the streams of glass are gathered into a single strand and wound onto a reel.

1. Which of the following aspects of glass fiber does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) The major developments in its production

(B) Its relationship with pottery making

(D) The variety of its uses in modern industry

2. The word coarse in line 1 is closest in meaning to

(A) decorative

(B) natural

(D) weak

3. Why was there nothing written about the making of Renaissance glass fibers until the seventeenth century?

(A) Glassmakers were unhappy with the quality of the fibers they could make.

(B) Glassmakers did not want to reveal the methods they used.

(D) Production methods had been well known for a long time.

4. According to the passage , using a hot glass tube rather than a wheel to pull fibers from molten

glass made the fibers

(A) quicker to cool

(B) harder to bend

(D) longer and more durable

5. The phrase this material in line 16 refers to

(A) glass fibers

(B) decorations

(D) novelties for collectors

6. The word brittle in line 17 is closest in meaning to

(A) easily broken

(B) roughly made

(D) shiny

7. The production of glass fibers was improved in the nineteenth century by which of the

following

(A) Adding silver to the molten glass

(B) Increasing the circumference of the glass tubes

(D) Using yarn reels

8. The word appreciated in line 23 is closest in meaning to

(A) experienced

(B) recognized

(D) increased

9. Which of the following terms is defined in the passage ?

(A) invention (line 7)

(B) circumference (line 17)

(D) bushing (line 25)

PASSAGE 53 ACBDA ADBD

托福阅读真题2

Composers today use a wider variety of sounds than ever before, including many that were once considered undesirable noises. Composer Edgard Varèse(1 883-1965) called thus the liberation of sound...the right to make music with any and all sounds. Electronic music, for example — made with the aid of computers, synthesizers, and electronic instruments — may include sounds that in the past would not have been considered musical. Environmental sounds, such as thunder, and electronically generated hisses and blips can be recorded, manipulated, and then incorporated into a musical composition. But composers also draw novel sounds from voices and nonelectronic instruments. Singers may be asked to scream, laugh, groan, sneeze, or to sing phonetic sounds rather than words. Wind and string players may lap or scrape their instruments. A brass or woodwind player may hum while playing, to produce two pitches at once; a pianist may reach inside the piano to pluck a string and then run a metal blade along it. In the music of the Western world, the greatest expansion and experimentation have involved percussion instruments, which outnumber strings and winds in many recent compositions. Traditional percussion instruments are struck with new types of beaters; and instruments that used to be couriered unconventional in Western music — tom-toms, bongos, slapsticks, maracas—are widely used.

In the search for novel sounds, increased use has been made in Western music of microtones. Non-western music typically divides and interval between two pitches more finely than western music does, thereby producing a greater number of distinct tones, or microtones, within the same interval. Composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki create sound that borders on electronic noise through tone clusters — closely spaced tones played together and heard as a mass, block, or band of sound. The directional aspect of sound has taken on new importance as well. Loudspeakers or groups of instruments may be placed at opposite ends of the stage, in the balcony, or at the back and sides of the auditorium.

Because standard music notation makes no provision for many of these innovations, recent music scores may contain graphlike diagrams, new note shapes and symbols, and novel ways of arranging notation on the page.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) The use of nontraditional sounds in contemporary music

(B) How sounds are produced electronically

(D) Several composers who have experimented with the electronic production of sound

2. The word wider in one 1 is closest in meaning to more impressive

(A) more distinctive

(B) more controversial

(D) more impressive

3. The passage suggests that Edgard Var è se is an example of a composer who

(A) criticized electronic music as too noiselike

(B) modified sonic of the electronic instruments he used in his music

(D) wrote music with environmental themes

4. The word it in line 12 refers to

(A) piano

(B) string

(D) music

5. According to the passage , which of the following types of instruments has played a role in

much of the innovation in western music?

(A) string

(B) percussion

(D) brass

6. The word thereby in line 20 is closest in meaning to

(A) in return for

(B) in spite of

(D) by that means

7. According to the passage , Krzysztof Penderecki is known for which of the following practices?

(A) Using tones that are clumped together

(B) Combining traditional and nontradinonal instruments

(D) Playing Western music for non-Western audiences

8. According to the passage , which of the following would be considered traditional elements of

Western music?

(A) microtones

(B) tom-toms and bongos

(D) hisses

9. In paragraph 3, the author mentions diagrams as an example of a new way to

(A) chart the history of innovation in musical notation

(B) explain the logic of standard musical notation

(D) indicate how particular sounds should be produced

PASSAGE 54 ACCBB DACD

.托福阅读真题3

In 1903 the members of the governing board of the University of Washington, in Seattle, engaged a firm of landscape architects, specialists in the design of outdoor environment — Olmsted Brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts — to advise them on an appropriate layout for the university grounds. The plan impressed the university officials, and in time many of its recommendations were implemented. City officials in Seattle, the largest city in the northwestern United States, were also impressed, for they employed the same organization to study Seattle's public park needs. John Olmsted did the investigation and subsequent report on Seattle's parks. He and his brothers believed that parks should be adapted to the local topography, utilize the area's trees and shrubs, and be available to the entire community. They especially emphasized the need for natural, serene settings where hurried urban dwellers could periodically escape from the city. The essence of the Olmsted park plan was to develop a continuous driveway, twenty miles long, that would tie together a whole series of parks, playgrounds, and parkways. There would be local parks and squares, too, but all of this was meant to supplement the major driveway, which was to remain the unifying factor for the entire system.

In November of 1903 the city council of Seattle adopted the Olmsted Report, and it automatically became the master plan for the city's park system. Prior to this report, Seattle's park development was very limited and funding meager. All this changed after the report. Between 1907 and 1913, city voters approved special funding measures amounting to $4,000,000. With such unparalleled sums at their disposal, with the Olmsted guidelines to follow, and with the added incentive of wanting to have the city at its best for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, the Parks Board bought aggressively. By 1913 Seattle had 25 parks amounting to 1,400 acres, as well as 400 acres in playgrounds, pathways, boulevards, and triangles. More lands would be added in the future, but for all practical purposes it was the great land surge of 1907-1913 that established Seattle's park system.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) The planned development of Seattle's public park system

(B) The organization of the Seattle city government

(D) The design and building of the University of Washington campus

2. The word engaged in line 2 is closest in meaning to

(A) trained

(B) hired

(D) evaluated

3. The word subsequent in line 8 is closest in meaning to

(A) complicated

(B) alternate

(D) detailed

4. Which of the following statements about parks does NOT reflect the views of the Olmsted

Brothers firm?

(A) They should be planted with trees that grow locally.

(B) They should provide a quiet, restful environment.

(D) They should be designed to conform to the topography of the area.

5. Why does the author mention local parks and squares in lines 14 when talking about the

Olmsted plan?

(A) To emphasize the difficulties facing adoption of the plan

(B) To illustrate the comprehensive nature of the plan

(D) To describe Seattle's landscape prior to implementation of the plan

6. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about how citizens of Seattle received

the Olmsted Report?

(A) They were hostile to the report's conclusions.

(B) They ignored the Olmsted's findings.

(D) They favored the city council's seeking advice from another firm.

7. According to the passage , when was the Olmsted Report officially accepted as the master plan

for the Seattle public park system?

(A) 1903

(B) 1907

(D) 1913

8. The word sums in line 20 is closest in meaning to

(A) problems

(B) amounts

(D) debts

9. According to the passage , which of the following was most directly influenced by the

Alaska-Yukon- Pacific Exposition?

(A) The University of Washington

(B) Brookline, Massachusetts

(D) The Seattle Parks Board

PASSAGE 55 ABCCB CABD

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