2016年4月23日托福閱讀真題答案及解析

　　2016年4月23日托福閱讀真題答案及解析!小編已經(jīng)為大家介紹了2016年4月23日托福閱讀真題的內(nèi)容，下面來看看小編為大家整理的對于本次考試的文章內(nèi)容分析，希望幫助大家掌握更多的考點資料。

　　詞匯題：

　　attest to=provide evidence of

　　fragments=pieces

　　painstaking=taking great effort to

　　substantial=considerable

　　configuration=arrangement

　　precise=accurate

　　distinctive=recognizable

　　in contrast to=as opposed to

　　dispersal=distribution

　　imitator=someone who copied his work

　　associated with=related to

　　第一篇：

　　題材劃分：社科類文章

　　主要內(nèi)容：

　　制造表的發(fā)展。

　　先說以前一個master一年只能做十幾個表，特別painstaking只有富人才能買得起。后來有個人叫Elf，他簡化了鐘表制造的材料，創(chuàng)新了一些設備，行了一系列變革，通過專業(yè)化啊水力啊，讓表產(chǎn)量變大，又輕，又便宜。本來特別重，不好運輸，他就把弄得更輕了，可以掛住，不用專門做cabinet了。然后使鐘表讓中產(chǎn)階級也買得起，從精細制造變成mass production。后來他為了peddler就繼續(xù)發(fā)明創(chuàng)造，然后在1816年造出了shelf clock獲得專利，但是還是有很多人抄襲模仿，這些模仿也在一定程度上促進了鐘表的精細化。他有個員工叫Jerome，借鑒了上一個老板的經(jīng)驗，然后和Elf一起將鐘表變得美觀時尚又物廉價美。

　　解析：整體文章詞匯相對較簡單，沒有生澀難懂的學術詞匯，只是第一篇相對而言比較難進入狀態(tài)，所以一定要調(diào)整好自己的心態(tài)。

　　In Europe, before the introduction of the mechanical clock, people told time by sun (using, for example, shadow sticks or sun dials) and water clocks. Sun clocks worked, of course, only on clear days; water clocks misbehaved when the temperature fell toward freezing, to say nothing of long-run drift as the result of sedimentation and clogging. Both these devices worked well in sunny climates; but in northern Europe the sun may be hidden by clouds for weeks at a time, while temperatures vary not only seasonally but from day to night.

　　Medieval Europe gave new importance to reliable time. The Catholic Church had its seven daily prayers, one of which was at night, requiring an alarm arrangement to waken monks before dawn. And then the new cities and towns, squeezed by their walls, had to know and order time in order to organize collective activity and ration space. They set a time to go to sleep. All this was compatible with older devices so long as there was only one authoritative timekeeper; but with urban growth and the multiplication of time signals, discrepancy brought discord and strife. Society needed a more dependable instrument of time measurement and found it in the mechanical clock.

　　We do not know who invented this machine, or where. It seems to have appeared in Italy and England (perhaps simultaneous invention) between 1275 and 1300. Once known, it spread rapidly, driving out water clocks but not solar dials, which were needed to check the new machines against the timekeeper of last resort. These early versions were rudimentary, inaccurate, and prone to breakdown.

　　Ironically, the new machine tended to undermine Catholic Church authority. Although church ritual had sustained an interest in timekeeping throughout the centuries of urban collapse that followed the fall of Rome, church time was nature’ s time. Day and night were divided into the same number of parts, so that except at the equinoxes, days and night hours were unequal; and then of course the length of these hours varied with the seasons. But the mechanical clock kept equal hours, and this implied a new time reckoning. The Catholic Church resisted, not coming over to the new hours for about a century. From the start, however, the towns and cities took equal hours as their standard, and the public clocks installed in town halls and market squares became the very symbol of a new, secular municipal authority. Every town wanted one; conquerors seized them as especially precious spoils of war; tourists came to see and hear these machines the way they made pilgrimages to sacred relics.

　　The clock was the greatest achievement of medieval mechanical ingenuity. Its general accuracy could be checked against easily observed phenomena, like the rising and setting of the sun. The result was relentless pressure to improve technique and design. At every stage, clockmakers led the way to accuracy and precision; they became masters of miniaturization, detectors and correctors of error, searchers for new and better. They were thus the pioneers of mechanical engineering and served as examples and teachers to other branches of engineering.

　　The clock brought order and control, both collective and personal. Its public display and private possession laid the basis for temporal autonomy: people could now coordinate comings and goings without dictation from above. The clock provided the punctuation marks for group activity, while enabling individuals to order their own work (and that of others) so as to enhance productivity. Indeed, the very notion of productivity is a by-product of the clock: once on can relate performance to uniform time units, work is never the same. One moves from the task-oriented time consciousness of the peasant (working on job after another, as time and light permit) and the time-filling busyness of the domestic servant (who always had something to do) to an effort to maximize product per unit of time.

　　第二篇

　　題材劃分：歷史類文章

　　主要內(nèi)容：

　　在泰國附近出現(xiàn)的一個D文明，語言和Mon語言有聯(lián)系。信奉佛教，并且有很多的貿(mào)易路線。因為用的都是這個文字講了好多什么雕塑啊亂七八糟的，最后說甚至不清楚有沒有一個capital，不知道正值也不知道ethic，這個文明出現(xiàn)在6世紀，到了9世紀的時候，有另一批人到達了這里。

　　解析：

　　就文章題材而言，是TPO和托福考試中經(jīng)常出現(xiàn)的題材類型，關于某種文明的起源和發(fā)展，文章結(jié)構比較簡單，沒有特別難的單詞，難度一般。

　　相似TPO練習推薦：

　　TPO26- Sumer and the First Cities of the Ancient Near East

　　TPO5- The Origin of the Pacific Island People

　　第三篇

　　題材劃分： 生物類文章

　　主要內(nèi)容：

　　考古學家如何區(qū)分家養(yǎng)的和野生的動植物，先說有好多方法可以區(qū)分，但有的時候很難分，他們的特征可能一樣又列舉了一堆區(qū)分方法，每個都有點問題，后來說一般都運用floated的技術使有機物和別的分離，這樣就可以分析植物家養(yǎng)與否。但是動物沒有這么好區(qū)分，因為很多特征在家養(yǎng)的和野生的動物身上都可以提現(xiàn)，所以有另外的辦法，就是看人類的捕殺數(shù)量和對象，在某個時間，人類殺成年的動物數(shù)量很多，證明人類那時就有選擇性的捕獵，但是這個辦法需要好好考慮，因為有很多因素，比如雌雄和動物數(shù)量波動很大等三個原因。還有一個發(fā)現(xiàn)就是一些屬于XX時代的磨光的石頭，然后又說農(nóng)業(yè)的發(fā)展讓他們建了一堆谷倉啊，容器的來儲藏糧食，所以不太可能游牧。這些都證明了在向馴養(yǎng)的轉(zhuǎn)變，最后一段說不能只根據(jù)clay pot來證明馴養(yǎng)的舉日本的例子。

　　解析：

　　就整體的文章結(jié)構來看，考生可通過閱讀對應的TS句來了解段落的大意，相對比較容易把握，題目難度也不高，基本上都可以從原文中找到對應的信息點。