考试日期：

2015年7月23日

Reading Passage 1 旧 V100717

Title:

Traditional Farming System  in Africa    

Question types:

Completion 4

Matching 4

T/F/NG 4

Multiple choice 1

文章大意

Traditional  Farming System in Africa

      A   By tradition land in Luapula  is not owned by individuals, but as in many other parts of Africa is allocated  by the headman or headwoman of a village to people of either sex, according  to need. Since land is generally prepared by hand, one ulupwa cannot take on a  very large area; in this sense land has not been a limiting resource over  large parts of the province. The situation has already changed near the main  townships,

and there has long been a scarcity of  land for cultivation in the Valley. In these areas registered ownership  patterns are becoming prevalent.

     B    Most of the traditional  cropping in Luapula, as in the Bemba area to the east, is based on citemene,  a system whereby crops are grown on the ashes of tree branches. As a rule,  entire trees are not felled, but are pollarded so that they can regenerate.  Branches are cut over an area of varying size early in the dry season, and  stacked to dry over a rough circle about a fifth to a tenth of the pollarded  area. The wood is fired before the rains and in the first year planted with  the African cereal finger millet (Eleusine coracana).

     C    During the second season,  and possibly for a few seasons more the area is planted to variously mixed  combinations of annuals such as maize, pumpkins (Telfiria occidentalis) and  other cucurbits, sweet potatoes, groundnuts, Phaseolus beans and various  leafy vegetables, grown with a certain amount of rotation. The diverse  sequence ends with vegetable cassava, which is often planted into the  developing last-but-one crop as a relay.

      D   Richards (1969) observed  that the practice of citemene entails a definite division of labour between  men and women. A man stakes out a plot in an unobtrusive manner, since it is  considered provocative towards one’s neighbours to mark boundaries in an  explicit way. The dangerous work of felling branches is the men’s  province, and involves much pride. Branches  are stacke by the women, and fired by the men. Formerly women and men  cooperated in the planting work, but the harvesting was always done by the  women. At the beginning of the cycle little weeding is necessary, since the  firing of the branches effectively destroys weeds. As the cycle progresses  weeds increase and nutrients eventually become depleted to a point where  further effort with annual crops is judged to be not worthwhile: at this  point the cassava is planted, since it can produce a crop on nearly exhausted  soil. Thereafter the plot is abandoned, and a new area pollarded for the next  citemene cycle.

     E    When   forest    is   not   available   -  this   is    increasingly   the   case    nowadays  -  various    ridging   systems

(ibala)are  built    on   small  areas,    to   be  planted with combinations    of    maize,  beans,    groundnuts     and sweet    potatoes,   usually   relayed  with    cassava.  These   plots   are  usually  tended    by  women,     and   provide subsistence. Where their roots have year-round access to water  tables mango, guava and oil-palm trees often grow   around    houses,   forming  a    traditional   agroforestry  system.    In   season   some    of   the   fruit    is   sold   by   the roadside or in local markets.

     F   The margins of dambos are  sometimes planted to local varieties of rice during the rainy season, and  areas    adjacent   to   vegetables   irrigated    with   water   from    the   dambo   during    the   dry   season.    The   extent   of cultivation is very limited, no doubt  because the growing of crops under dambo conditions calls for a great deal of  skill. Near towns some of the vegetable produce is sold in local markets.

      G    Fishing has long provided a  much needed protein supplement to the diet of Luapulans, as well as being the  one substantial source of cash. Much fish is dried for sale to areas away  from the main waterways. The Mweru and Bangweulu Lake Basins are the main  areas of year-round fishing, but the Luapula River is also exploited during  the latter part of the dry season. Several previously abundant and desirable  species, such as   the  Luapula     salmon     or   mpumbu      (Labeo   altivelis)   and  pale    (Sarotherodon     machochir)     have    all  but

disappeared from Lake Mweru, apparently  due to mismanagement.

     H     Fishing has always been a  far more remunerative activity in Luapula that crop husbandry. A fisherman  may earn more in a week than a bean or maize grower in a whole season. I  sometimes heard claims that the relatively high earnings to be obtained from  fishing induced an ‘easy come, easy go’ outlook among Luapulan  men. On the other hand, someone who secures  good but erratic earnings may feel that their investment in an economically  productive activity is not worthwhile because Luapulans fail to cooperate  well in such activities. Besides, a fisherman with spare cash will find  little in the way of working equipment to spend his money on.

Better spend one’s money in the bars and  have a good time!

     I    Only small numbers of  cattle or oxen are kept in the province owing to the prevalence of the tsetse  fly. For the few herds, the dambos provide subsistence grazing during the dry  season. The absence of animal draft power greatly limits peoples’ ability to  plough and cultivate land: a married couple can rarely manage to prepare  by hand-hoeing. Most people keep freely  roaming chickens and goats. These act as a reserve for bartering, but may  also be occasionally slaughtered for ceremonies or for entertaining important  visitors. These animals are not a regular part of most peoples’ diet.  

     J    Citemene has been an  ingenious system for providing people with seasonal production of high  quality cereals and vegetables in regions of acid, heavily leached soils.  Nutritionally, the most serious deficiency was that of protein. This could at  times be alleviated when fish was available, provided that cultivators lived  near the Valley and could find the means of bartering for dried fish. The  citemene/fishing system was well adapted to the ecology of the miombo regions  and sustainable for long periods, but only as long as human population  densities stayed at low levels. Although population densities are still much  lower than in several countries of South-East Asia, neither the fisheries nor  the forests and woodlands of Luapula are capable, with unmodified traditional  practices, of supporting the people in a sustainable manner. Overall, people  must learn to intensify and diversify their productive systems while yet  ensuring that these systems   will   remain    productive   in   the    future,   when   even    more   people   will   need   food.   Increasing   overall production of food, though a vast  challenge in itself, will not be enough, however. At the same time storage

and distribution systems must allow  everyone access to at least a moderate share of the total.

部分答案

  Questions 1-4

      Complete the sentences below with words taken from Reading Passage 1.

      Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

      Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

      1    In Luapula land allocation  is in accordance with need

      2   The citemene system provides  the land with (the) ashes where crops are            planted.  

     3   During the second season,  the last planted crop is (vegetable) cassava

     4   Under suitable conditions,  fruit trees are planted near houses

Questions 5-8

     Classify the following items with the correct description.

     Write your answers in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

     A    fish

     B    oxen

     C    goats

     5     be used in some unusual  occasions, such as celebrations.     C

     6     cannot thrive for being  affected by the pests.   B

     7     be the largest part of  creating profit. A

     8     be sold beyond the local  area.   A

     Questions 9-12

     Do the following statements agree with the information given in  Reading Passage      1?

     In boxes 9-12 on your answer sheet, write

     TRUE                  if the  statement agrees with the information

     FALSE                 if the  statement contradicts the information

     NOT GVEN             if there is no information on this

     9     People rarely use animals  to cultivate land.   TRUE

     10   When it is a busy time,  children usually took part in the labor force.   NOT GIVEN

      11   The local residents eat  goats on a regular time.   FALSE

      12   Though citemene has been a  sophisticated system, it could not provide enough protein.       TRUE

     Questions 13

     Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

     Write the correct letter in the box 13 on your answer sheet.

     What is the writer’s opinion about the traditional ways of  practices?     B

     A    They can supply the  nutrition that people need.

     B    They are not capable of  providing adequate support to the population.

     C    They are productive systems  that need no more improving.

     D    They will be easily  modified in the future.

Reading Passage 2 旧 V100529

Title:

Finding our Way

Question types:

Matching 5

Multiple choice 3

T/F/NG 5

文章大意

Finding  Our Way

     A “Drive 200 yards, and then turn right, “says the car’s computer  voice. You relax in the driver’s seat,   follow the directions and reach your destination without error. It’s  certainly nice to have the Global Positioning System (GPS) to direct you to  within a few yards of your goal. Yet if the satellite service’s digital maps  become even slightly outdated, you can become lost. Then you have to rely on  the ancient human skill of navigating in three-dimensional space. Luckily,  your biological finder has an important advantage over GPS: it does not go  awry if only one part of the guidance system goes wrong, because it works in  various ways. You can ask questions of people on the sidewalk. Or follow a  street that looks familiar. Or rely on a navigational rubric: "If I keep  the East River on my left, I will eventually cross 34th Street.” The human  positioning system is flexible and capable of learning. Anyone who knows the  way from point A to point B—and from A to C—can probably figure out how to  get from B to C, too.

      B    But how does this complex  cognitive system really work? Researchers are looking at several strategies  people use to orient themselves in space: guidance, path integration and  route following. We may use all three or combinations thereof. And as experts  learn more about these navigational skills, they are making the case that our  abilities may underlie our powers of memory and logical thinking. Grand  Central, Please Imagine that you have arrived in a place you have never  visited—New York City. You get off the train at Grand Central Terminal in  midtown Manhattan. You have a few hours to explore before you must return for  your ride home. You head uptown to see popular spots you have been told  about: Rockefeller Center, Central Park, and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art. You meander  in and out of shops along the way. Suddenly, it is time to get back to the  station. But how?

      C    If you ask passersby for  help, most likely you will receive information in many different forms. A  person who orients herself by a prominent landmark would gesture southward:  "Look down there. See the tall, broad    MetLife   Building?   Head    for   that—the  station   is  right  below   it.  “Neurologists  call   this  navigational  approach   "guidance,”  meaning  that   a  landmark  visible   from  a  distance   serves  as  the   marker  for  one’s   destination.

      D    Another city dweller might  say: "What places do you remember passing? . . . Okay. Go toward the end  of Central Park, then walk down to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A few more blocks,  and Grand Central will be  off to your  left. “In this case, you are pointed toward the most recent place you recall,  and you aim for it. Once  

there you head for the next notable place  and so on, retracing your path. Your brain is adding together the individual  legs of your trek into a cumulative progress report. Researchers call this  strategy "path integration.” Many animals rely primarily on path  integration to get around, including insects, spiders, crabs and rodents. The  desert ants of the genus Cataglyphis employ this method to return from  foraging as far as 100 yards away. They note the general direction they came  from and retrace their steps, using the polarization of sunlight to orient  themselves even under overcast skies. On their way back they are faithful to  this inner homing vector. Even when a scientist picks up an ant and puts it  in a totally different spot, the insect stubbornly proceeds in the originally  determined direction until it has gone "back" all of the distance  it wandered from its nest. Only then does the ant realize it has not  succeeded, and it begins to walk in successively larger loops to find its way  home.

     E    Whether it is trying to get  back to the anthill or the train station, any animal using path integration  must keep track of its own movements so it knows, while returning, which  segments it has already completed. As    you   move,   your    brain   gathers   data    from   your   environment—sights,   sounds,    smells,   lighting,   muscle contractions, a sense of time  passing—to determine which way your body has gone. The church spire, the  sizzling sausages on that vendor’s grill, the open courtyard, and the train  station—all represent snapshots of memorable junctures during your journey.

     F    In addition to guidance and  path integration, we use a third method for finding our way. An office worker  you approach for help on a Manhattan street comer might say: "Walk  straight down Fifth, turn left on 47th, turn right on Park, go through the  walkway under the Helmsley Building, then cross the street to the

MetLife Building into Grand Central.”  This strategy, called route following, uses landmarks such as buildings  and    street  names,  plus   directions—straight,    turn,  go  through—for    reaching   intermediate   points.  Route

following is more precise than guidance  or path integration, but if you forget the details and take a wrong turn, the  only way to recover is to backtrack until you reach a familiar spot, because  you do not know the general direction or have a reference landmark for your  goal. The route-following navigation strategy truly challenges

the brain. We have to keep all the  landmarks and intermediate directions in our head. It is the most detailed  and therefore most reliable method, but it can be undone by routine memory  lapses. With path integration, our cognitive memory is less burdened; it has  to deal with only a few general instructions and the homing vector. Path  integration works because it relies most fundamentally on our knowledge of  our body’s general direction  

of movement, and we always have access to  these inputs. Nevertheless, people often choose to give route- following  directions, in part because saying "Go straight that way!" just  does not work in our complex, man- made surroundings.

     G    Road Map or Metaphor? On  your next visit to Manhattan you will rely on your memory to get around. Most  likely  you will use guidance, path  integration and route following in various combinations.  But how exactly do these constructs deliver  concrete directions? Do we humans have, as an image of the real world, a kind  of road map in our heads—with symbols for cities, train stations and  churches; thick lines for highways; narrow lines for local streets?  Neurobiologists and cognitive psychologists do call the portion of our memory  that controls navigation a "cognitive map.” The map metaphor is  obviously seductive: maps are the easiest way   to present geographic information for convenient visual inspection. In  many cultures, maps were developed

before writing, and today they are used  in almost every society. It is even possible that maps derive from a  universal way in which our spatial-memory networks are wired.

     H   Yet the notion of a literal  map in our heads may be misleading; a growing body of research implies that  the cognitive map is mostly a metaphor. It may be more like a hierarchical  structure of relationships.  To get  back to Grand Central, you first envision (想象) the large scale—that is, you visualize the general direction of the station.  Within that system you then imagine the route to the last place you remember.  After that, you observe your nearby surroundings to pick out a recognizable  storefront or street comer that will send you toward that place. In this  hierarchical, or nested, scheme, positions and distances are relative, in  contrast with a road map, where the same information is shown in a  geometrically precise scale.

部分答案

Questions 14-18

     Use the information in the passage to match the category of each  navigation method (listed A-C) with

correct statement. Write the appropriate  letters A-C in boxes 14-18on your answer sheet.

     NB you may use any letter more than once

     A    Guidance

     B    Path integration.

     C    Route following

14 Using basic direction from starting  point and light intensity to move on.             B

15 Using combination of place and  direction heading for destination.         C

16 Using an iconic building near your  destination as orientation.      A

17 Using a retrace method from a known  place if a mistake happens.                C

18 Using a passed spot as reference for a  new integration.     B

Questions 19-21

     Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

     Write your answers in boxes 19-21 on your answer sheet.

    19 What does the ant of Cataglyphis respond if it has been taken to  another       location according to the  passage?

     A   Changes the orientation  sensors improvingly

     B   Releases biological scent  for help from others

    C   Continues to move by the original  orientation

     D   Totally gets lost once  disturbed

     20 Which of the followings is true about "cognitive map" in  this passage?

     A   There is not obvious  difference contrast by real map

     B   It exists in our head and is  always correct

     C   It only exists under some  cultures

   D   It was managed by brain memory

     21 Which of following description of way findings correctly reflects  the function of cognitive map?

   A   It visualizes a virtual route in a large  scope

     B   It reproduces an exact  details of every landmark

     C   Observation plays a more  important role

     D   Store or supermarket is a  must in the map

    Questions 22-26

     Do the following statements agree with the information given in  Reading Passage 2?

     In boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet, write

     TRUE                    if the  statement is true

     FALSE                  if the  statement is false

     NOT GIVEN              if the  information is not given in the passage

22 Biological navigation has a state of  flexibility. TRUE

23 You will always receive good reaction  when you ask direction.       NOT GIVEN

24 When someone follows a route, he or  she collects comprehensive perceptional information in mind on

         the way.    TRUE

25 Path integration requires more thought  from brain compared with route-following.        FALSE

26 In a familiar surroundings, an exact  map of where you are will automatically emerge in your head.   FALSE

Reading Passage 3 旧

Title:

Hierarchy and history language

Question types:

Multiple choice 7

人物观点配对 6

Y/N/NG 3

文章大意

人类迁徙语言和语言之间的联系Greenberg的研究，把语言分成三类。理论发展和其他专家的意见。

Questions 27-32 Matching     人名  （美国大学教授）和观点配对

27. All the linguistic opposed to his  findings because……

    the Green’s data insufficient and the conclusion was limited

28. XX Campbell-Linguistic once who was

    against going thousands of year back to study languages

29. Linguistic, the one who…

    said that language are not related to basic genetics.

30. XX linguistic who--- did not attempt  this method

31. XXX--- languages are related to each  other based on genetics.

32. The mother tongue and opposed ones,  --- had a number of similar words, sound units and segment. Questions33-34

     Do the following statements agree with the information given in  Reading Passage 3?

     In boxes 33-34 on your answer sheet, write

     TRUE                  if the  statement is true

     FALSE                 if the  statement is false

     NOT GIVEN             if the  information is not given in the passage

33. Linguistics had used astronomy for  grouping language         NOT GIVEN

34. Currently there is not enough  interest in language research  FALSE

35-40. 待补充

难度分析

本次考试三旧，难度中等稍偏高，题型以判断、配对、选择为主。

文章选材方面，第一篇农业类，第二篇人类行为研究类， 第三篇语言类。

建议备考的同学们仍然要重点把握高频题型，不要忽视同义替换词的积累。此外，备考期间建议多读一些原版英文读物，例如自然、经济学人等学术性期刊杂志。也可以多用维基百科搜索雅思常考题材话题进行广泛阅读增加知识面，提升阅读速度。