| 托福考试易错题（2019/6/27） |
| 第1题： Human Migration Human migration: the term is vague. What people usually think of is the permanent movement of people from one home to another. More broadly, though, migration means all the ways—from the seasonal drift of agricultural workers within a country to the relocation of refugees from one country to another. Migration is big, dangerous, and compelling. It is 60 millionEuropeans leaving home from the 16th to the 20th century. It is some 15 million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims swept up in a tumultuous shuffle of citizens between India and Pakistan after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. Migration is the dynamic undertow of population change: everyone’s solution, everyone’s conflict.As the century turns, migration, with its inevitable economic and political turmoil, has been called "one of the greatest challenges of the coming century". But it is much more than that. It is, as has always been, the great adventure of human life. Migration helped create humans, drove us to conquer the planet, shaped our societies, and promises to reshape them again. "You have a history book written in your genes," said Spencer Wells. The book he’s trying to read goes back to long before even the first word was written, and it is a story of migration. Wells, a blond geneticist at Stanford University, spent the summer of 1998 exploring remote parts of Transcaucasia andCentralAsia with three colleagues in a Land Rover, looking for drops of bloo D、In the blood, donated by the people he met, he will search for the story that genetic markers can tell of the long paths human life has taken across theEarth. A、[■]But however the paths are traced, the basic story is simple: people have been moving since they were people. B、[■] If early humans hadn’t moved and intermingled as much as they did, they probably would have continued to evolve into different species. C、[■] From beginnings inAfrica, most researchers agree, groups of hunter-gatherers spread out, driven to the ends of theEarth. D、[■] To demographer KingsleyDavis, two things made migration happen. First, human beings, with their tools and language, could adapt to different conditions without having to wait for evolution to make them suitable for a new niche. Second, as populations grew, cultures began to differ, and inequalities developed between groups. The first factor gave us the keys to the door of any room on the planet; the other gave us reasons to use them. Over the centuries, as agriculture spread across the planet, people moved toward places where metal was found and worked to centers of commerce that then became cities. Those places were, in turn, invaded and overrun by people in later generations called barbarians. In between, these storm surges were steadier but similarly profound tides in which people moved out to colonize or were captured and brought in as slaves. For a while the population ofAthens, that city of legendary enlightenment was as much as 35 percent slaves. "What strikes me is how important migration is as a cause and effect in great world events. " Mark Miller, co-author of TheAge of Migration and a professor of political science at the University ofDelaware, told me recently. It is difficult to think of any great events that did not involve migration. Religions spawned pilgrims or settlers; wars drove refugees before them and made new land available for the conquerors; political upheavals displaced thousands or millions; economic innovations drew workers and entrepreneurs like magnets; environmental disasters like famine or disease pushed their bedraggled survivors anywhere they could replant hope. "It’s part of our nature, this movement," Miller said, "It’s just a fact of the human condition. " According to Paragraph 1, which of the following |
| 【单选题】： |
| 第2题：Archaeological discoveries have led some scholars to believe that the first Mesopotamian inventors of writing may have been a people the laterBabylonians called Subarians.According to tradition, they came from the north and moved into Uruk in the south.By about 3100 B、C, They Were apparently subjugated in southern Mesopotamia by the Sumerians, whose name became(5) synonymous with the region immediately north of the Persian Gulf, in the fertile lower valleys of the Tigris andEuphrates. Here the Sumerians were already well established by the year 3000 B、C、 They had invented bronze, an alloy that could be cast in molds, out of which they made tools and weapons. They lived in cities, and they had begun to acquire and use capital. Perhaps most important, the Sumerians adapted writing (probably from the Subarians) into a flexible tool of(10) communication. Archacologists have known about the Sumerians for over 150 years.Archacologists working at Nineveh in northern Mesopotamia in the mid-nineteenth century found many inscribed clay tablets. Some they could decipher because the language was a Semitic oneAkkadian), on which scholars had already been working for a generation.But other tablets were inscribed in another language(15) that was not Semitic and previously unknown.Because these inscriptions mad reference to the king of Summer andAkkad, a scholar suggested that the mew language be called Sumerian. But it was not until the 1890’s that archaeologists excavating in city-states well to the south of Nieveh found many thousands of tablets inscribed in Sumerian only.Because theAkkadians thought of Sumerian as a classical language (as ancient Greek and Latin are considered today),(20) they taught it to educated persons and they inscribed vocabulary, translation exercised, and other study aids on tablets. Working from knownAkkadian to previously unknown Sumerian, scholars since the 1890’s have learned how to read the Sumerian language moderately well. Vast quantities of tablets in Sumerian have been unearthed during the intervening years from numerous sites.The phrase "synonymous with" in line 5 is closest in meaning to A、equivalent to B、important for C．respected in D．familiar with |
| 【单选题】： |
| 第3题：{{B}}Set 4{{/B}} 1In the study of mythology, the character known as the trickster is a god, spirit, human, or animal who breaks the rules of the gods or nature, sometimes maliciously but usually with results that are positive. The rule breaking often takes the form of {{B}}mischief{{/B}} or {{B}}thievery{{/B}}. The trickster is usually male but occasionally disguises himself in female form. He can be cunning or foolish, or both, and often very humorous. His curiosity leads him into trouble, but he rescues himself with his sly wit. {{U}}When he plays tricks, he performs important cultural tasks that benefit humans, and for this reason the trickster is a significant figure in world mythology. {{/U}} 2In different cultures, the trickster and the hero are combined in various ways. In Greek mythology, Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to humans, a feat making him more of a hero than a trickster, and he is usually portrayed as an intellectual. In many NativeAmerican stories,Coyote also steals fire from the gods, butCoyote is usually more of a jokester or a prankster than an intellectual. 3The trickster is both creator and destroyer, giver and taker, one who tricks others and is tricked in return. The {{U}}pranks{{/U}} of the trickster are compulsive and uncontrollable. He does not act consciously; he acts out of passion and impulse. He knows neither good nor evil, yet he is responsible for {{U}}both{{/U}}. He possesses no morals, yet through his behavior morality comes into being.According to psychologistCarl Jung, the trickster is "a primitive cosmic being of divine-animal nature, on the one hand superior to man because of his superhuman qualities, and on the other hand inferior to him because of his unreason and unconsciousness." 4In NativeAmerican mythology, the majority of trickster myths concern the creation or transformation of the earth. Such stories have a trickster who is always wandering, who is always hungry, who is not guided by normal ideas of good and evil, and who possesses some magical powers. In some stories he is a deity, and in others he is an animal or human subject to death. Several of these myths feature Raven orCoyote as the trickster-hero. 5In many creation myths of the Pacific Northwest, Raven illustrates the transformational nature of tricksters. Raven is the greatest shapeshifter of all and can change into anything to get what he wants. In one story, there is darkness at the beginning of the world, so Raven decides he will find light. He flies far from the earth, searching in the darkness, until he spots a glimmer of light coming from a window in the house of the gods. Raven knows the gods are protective of their possessions, so he devises a trick. He perches on a pine branch next to the house and watches each day as the chief god’s daughter draws water from a nearby lake. He magically transforms himself into a {{B}}pinyon seed{{/B}} and falls into the girl’s drinking cup. The girl swallows the seed, which grows within her body, and she eventually gives birth to a boy. The child delights his grandparents, and his laughter tricks the elder gods into revealing where they hide a shining ball of light. The gods give the child the ball to play with, and then Raven transforms back to a bird and flies off carrying the ball of light in his beak. He hangs the ball-the sun-in the sky, bringing light to the worlD、 6 Coyote’s character is similar to that of Raven’s, and both appear in stories carrying out similar roles. In several stories from theAmerican Southwest,Coyote steals fire from a group of "fire beings" and gives it to humans. In some talesCoyote wants to make human life more interesting, so he introduces sicknes 【单选题】： | |
| 第4题：Composers today use a wider variety of sounds than ever before, including many that were once considered undesirable noises.ComposerEdgard Varese (1883-1965) called thus the "liberation of soun D、..the right to make music with any and all sounds." Electronic music, for example―made with the aid of computers, synthesizers, and(5)electronic instruments―may include sounds that in the past would not have been consdered musicalEnvironmental 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(10) 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.(15) Traditional percussion instruments are struck with new types of beaters; and instruments that used to be couriered unconvennonal in Western music―tom-toms, bongos, slapsticks, maracas―are widelv use D、 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(20) finely than Western music does, thereby producing a greter number of distinct tones, or micro tones, within the same interval.Composers such as Krzysztof Pmderecki create sound that borders on electronic noise through tone clusters―closely spaced tones played together and heard as a mass, block, or band of soun D、The directional aspect of sound has taken on new importance as well Loudspeakers or groups of instruments may be placed(25) 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.The passage suggests thatEdgard Varese is an example of a composer who A、criticized eletronic music as too noiselike B．modified sonic of the electronic instruments he used in his music C．believed that any sound could be used in music D、wrote music with environmental themes |
| 【单选题】： |
| 第5题： Aspects of the Sun Since the beginning of time, human beings have been fascinated by the dramas unfolding in the firmament above--the shifting arch of the sun, the changing faces of the moon, the regular patterns of stars turning as the seasons change. The study of these subtle patterns and relationships in the cosmos evolved intoAstronomy (or "law of the stars"), one of the oldest of the sciences. While different cultures, religions, and scientific theories all offer contrasting explanations for cosmic phenomena, there is one point on which they all agree: there would be no life onEarth if not for the sun. Modern science has now proven that the sun, whose reliable path across the sky gives us the contours of our days and the duration of our nights, is the focal point of our solar system. The sun is, in fact, a star that is nearly 110 times the size ofEarth and comprises more than 99% of the solar system’s mass, which creates enough gravitational pull to extend to the outer reaches of our solar system and keep all manner of matter (planets, asteroids, meteors and even dust) in orbit. Like other stars, the sun is made up of various gases, the most prevalent being hydrogen at around 74%, and helium at around 25%.Because the sun’s gravitational force inward is equal to that of its thermal pressure outward, it is in a state of hydrostatic equilibrium, which causes the sun to compress into a sphere. While the sun is a near perfect sphere and appears to the naked eye as a precise and sharply defined yellow circle against the sky (hence its ancient astronomical symbol of a circle with a point at its center), it does not actually have a definite edge or boundary. Instead, the density of its gases decreases exponentially with distance from the core. Like most stars, the sun generates heat and energy via nuclear fusion, which takes place in the core at the center of the sun. This energy must travel through a number of different layers before it reaches the photosphere, the first layer of the sun’s atmosphere, where it escapes into space as sunlight. It is the photosphere that we see when we look at the sun. The layer is about 100 km thick, which is relatively thin compared to other solar layers, and is much cooler than the sun’s outermost atmospheric layer called the coronA、One of the sun’s greatest mysteries is the incredible heat of the coronA、Usually heat decreases with distance from the core; this is true for the sun until you reach the corona, which becomes suddenly hotter by a factor of nearly 200 times that of the photosphere. The exact process of heating and maintaining the corona is still one of the unsolved solar mysteries that continue to fascinate and perplex scientists today. Another solar mystery is the curious nature of solar flares.Equivalent to millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs detonated simultaneously, solar flares are the most intense and energetic explosions that occur in our solar system. ■ A、These explosions occur on the sun’s photosphere and are difficult to view through the layer’s bright emissions, even with specialized equipment. Solar flares are directly linked to another more easily observable solar phenomenon--sunspots. With the invention of the telescope in 1608, astronomers were finally able to look into the face of the sun and see that it is not a perfect and unchanging yellow disc as they had expected, but that it is often marred by discernibleble mishes or dark spots. ■ B、These dark areas are the coolest regions on the sun’s photosphere and are characterized by intense magnetic activity. The frequency of sunspot occurrences follows an eleven-year solar or sunspot cycle. ■ C、At the minimum end of the cycle, there is very little sunspot activity and at the maximum end, there might be hundreds of visible sunspots.An increased number of sunspots indicates a correlated increase in solar flare activity. ■ D、 |
| 【单选题】： |