常州朗阁5月12日雅思阅读考题回顾

作者:jasmine老师来源:朗阁时间:2022-05-19 18:22:01

摘要:常州朗阁5月12日雅思阅读考题回顾

  P1 Antarctic Exploration

  P2 Population Decrease

  P3 Australian Mammal Extinction

  朗阁讲师点评

  1. 作为一场在周四举行的考试因为参考人数较少的所以我们拿到的考题回顾的信息也少得可怜,只有简单的三篇文章的话题信息,题型信息这一块完全没有,所以考生们只能根据话题信息做一些背景阅读和了解。

  2. 整体分析:涉及地理地质类(P1)、社会类(P2)、动物学(P3)。

  3. 部分答案及参考文章:

  Passage 1:Antarctic Exploration

  难易度:话题难度中等

  具体文章和题目待确认

  本篇文章话题可以参考雅思阅读真题”Antarctica-in from the cold?”一文

  A A little over a century ago, men of the ilk of Scott, Shackleton and Mawson battled against Antarctica's blizzards, cold and deprivation. In the name of Empire and in an age of heroic deeds they created an image of Antarctica that was to last well into the 20th century - an image of remoteness, hardship, bleakness and isolation that was the province of only the most courageous of men. The image was one of a place removed from everyday reality, of a place with no apparent value to anyone.

  B As we enter the 21st century, our perception of Antarctica has changed. Although physically Antarctica is no closer and probably no warmer, and to spend time there still demands a dedication not seen in ordinary life, the continent and its surrounding ocean are increasingly seen to an integral part of Planet Earth, and a key component in the Earth System. Is this because the world seems a little smaller these days, shrunk by TV and tourism, or is it because Antarctica really does occupy a central spot on Earth's mantle? Scientific research during the past half century has revealed - and continues to reveal - that Antarctica's great mass and low temperature exert a major influence on climate and ocean circulation, factors which influence the lives of millions of people all over the globe.

  C Antarctica was not always cold. The slow break-up of the super-continent Gondwana with the northward movements of Africa, South America, India and Australia eventually created enough space around Antarctica for the development of an Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACQ, that flowed from west to east under the influence of the prevailing westerly winds. Antarctica cooled, its vegetation perished, glaciation began and the continent took on its present-day appearance. Today the ice that overlies the bedrock is up to 4km thick, and surface temperatures as low as - 89.2deg C have been recorded. The icy blast that howls over the ice cap and out to sea - the so-called katabatic wind - can reach 300 km/hr, creating fearsome wind-chill effects.

  D Out of this extreme environment come some powerful forces that reverberate around the world. The Earth's rotation, coupled to the generation of cells of low pressure off the Antarctic coast, would allow Astronauts a view of Antarctica that is as beautiful as it is awesome. Spinning away to the northeast, the cells grow and deepen, whipping up the Southern Ocean into the mountainous seas so respected by mariners. Recent work is showing that the temperature of the ocean may be a better predictor of rainfall in Australia than is the pressure difference between Darwin and Tahiti - the Southern Oscillation Index. By receiving more accurate predictions, graziers in northern Queensland are able to avoid overstocking in years when rainfall will be poor. Not only does this limit their losses but it prevents serious pasture degradation that may take decades to repair. CSIRO is developing this as a prototype forecasting system, but we can confidently predict that as we know more about the Antarctic and Southern Ocean we will be able to enhance and extend our predictive ability.

  E The ocean's surface temperature results from the interplay between deep- water temperature, air temperature and ice. Each winter between 4 and 19 million square km of sea ice form, locking up huge quantities of heat close to the continent.Only now can we start to unravel the influence of sea ice on the weather that is experienced in southern Australia. But in another way the extent of sea ice extends its influence far beyond V Antarctica. Antarctic krill - the small shrimp-like crustaceans that are the staple diet for baleen whales, penguins, some seals, flighted sea birds and many fish - breed well in years when sea ice is extensive and poorly when it is not. Mary species of baleen whales and flighted sea birds migrate between the hemispheres and when the krill are less abundant they do not thrive.

  F The circulatory system of the world's oceans is like a huge conveyor belt, moving water and dissolved minerals and nutrients from one hemisphere to the other, and from the ocean's abyssal depths to the surface. The ACC is the longest current in the world, and has the largest flow. Through it, the deep flows of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans are joined to form part of a single global thermohalinc circulation. During winter, the howling katabatics sometimes scour the ice off patches of the sea's surface leaving Large ice- locked lagoons, or 'polynyas'. Recent research has shown that as fresh sea ice forms, it is continuously stripped away by the wind and may be blown up to 90km in a single day. Since only fresh water freezes into ice, the water that remains becomes increasingly salty and dense, sinking until it spills over the continental shelf. Cold water carries more oxygen than warm water, so when it rises, well into the northern hemisphere, it reoxygenates and revitalises the ocean. The state of the northern oceans, and their biological productivity, owe much to what happens in the Antarctic.

  Passage 2: Population Decrease

  难易度:简单

  具体文章和题目待确认

  Passage 3:Australian Mammal Extinction

  难易度:中等

  具体文章和题目待确认

  本篇文章话题可以参考真题“猛犸象的灭绝”一文

  Mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, proboscideans equipped with long, curved tusks and in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Ptiocene epoch from around 5 million years ago, into the Hotocene at about 4,500 years ago, and were members of the family Elephantidae, which contains,along with mammoths, the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors.

  A Like their modern relatives, mammoths were quite large. The largest known

  species reached heights in the region of 4m at the shoulder and weights up to 8 tonnes, while exceptionally large males may have exceeded 12 tonnes. However, most species of mammoth were only about as large as a modern Asian elephant. Both sexes bore tusks. A first, small set appeared at about the age of six months and these were replaced at about 18 months by the permanent set. Growth of the permanent set was at a rate of about l t0 6 inches per year. Based on studies of their close relatives, the modem elephants,mammoths probably had a gestation period of 22 months, resulting in a single calf being born. Their social structure was probably the same as that of African and Asian elephants, with females living in herds headed by a matriarch, whilst hulls lived solitary lives or formed loose groups after sexual maturity.

  B MEXICO CITY-Although it’s hard to imagine in this age of urban sprawl and automobiles, North America once belonged to mammoths, camels, ground sloths as large as cows, bear-size beavers and other formidable beasts. Some 11,000 years ago, however, these large bodied mammals and others-about 70 species in all-disappeared. Their demise coincided roughly with the arrival of humans in the New World and dramatic climatic change-factors that have inspired several theories about the die-off. Yet despite decades of scientific investigation, the exact cause remains a mystery. Now new findings offer support to one of these controversial hypotheses: that human hunting drove this megafaunal menagerie to extinction. The overkill model emerged in the 1960s, when it was put forth by Paul S. Martin of the University of Arizona. Since then, critics have charged that no evidence exists to support the idea that the first Americans hunted to the extent necessary to cause these extinctions. But at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Mexico City last October, paleoecologist John Alroy of the University of California at Santa Barbara argued that, in fact, hunting-driven extinction is not only plausible, it was unavoidable. He has determined, using a computer simulation that even a very modest amount of hunting would have wiped these animals out.

  C Assuming an initial human population of 100 people that grew no more than 2 percent annually, Alroy determined that if each band of, say, 50 people killed 15 to 20 large mammals a year, humans could have eliminated the animal populations within 1,000 years. Large mammals in particular would have been vulnerable to the pressure because they have longer gestation periods than smaller mammals and their young require extended care.

  D Not everyone agrees with Alroy’s assessment. For one, the results depend in part on population-size estimates for the extinct animals-figures that are not necessarily reliable. But a more specific criticism comes from mammalogist Ross D. E. MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who points out that the relevant archaeological record contains barely a dozen examples of stone points embedded in mammoth bones (and none, it should be noted, are known from other megafaunal remains)-hardly what one might expect if hunting drove these animals to extinction. Furthermore, some of these species had huge ranges the giant Jefferson’s ground sloth, for example, lived as far north as the Yukon and as far south as Mexico which would have made slaughtering them in numbers sufficient to cause their extinction rather implausible, he says.

  E MacPhee agrees that humans most likely brought about these extinctions (as well as others around the world that coincided with human arrival), but not directly. Rather he suggests that people may have introduced hyper lethal disease, perhaps through their dogs or hitchhiking vermin, which then spread wildly among the immunologically naive species of the New World. As in the overkill model, populations of large mammals would have a harder time recovering. Repeated outbreaks of a hyper disease could thus quickly drive them to the point of no return. So far MacPhee does not have empirical evidence for the hyper disease hypothesis, and it won’t be easy to come by: hyperlethal disease would kill far too quickly to leave its signature on the bones themselves. But he hopes that analyses of tissue and DNA from the last mammoths to perish will eventually reveal murderous microbes.

  F The third explanation for what brought on this North American extinction does not involve human beings. Instead, its proponents blame the loss on the weather. The Pleistocene epoch witnessed considerable climatic instability, explains paleontologist Russell W. Graham of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. As a result, certain habitats disappeared, and species that had once formed communities split apart. For some animals, this change brought opportunity. For much of the megafauna, however, the increasingly homogeneous environment left them with shrinking geographical ranges-a death sentence for large animals, which need large ranges. Although these creatures managed to maintain viable populations through most of the Pleistocene, the final major fluctuation-the so-called Younger Dry as event pushed them over the edge, Graham says. For his part, Alroy is convinced that human hunters demolished the titans of the Ice Age. The overkill model explains everything the disease and climate scenarios explain, he asserts, and makes accurate predictions about which species would eventually go extinct.“Personally, I’m a vegetarian,” he remarks, “and I find all of this kind of Gross but believable.”

  考试建议

  本场考试由于考生们*的回顾信息太少,所以我们通过有限的信息只能看到话题方面的情况,而相似的话题在雅思真题当中也出现过,考生们可以参考作为补充背景信息和词汇量的途径


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