140719雅思考试阅读考题回顾

朗阁海外考试研究中心Research Academy for Foreign Language Examinations雅思考试阅读考题回顾朗阁海外考试研究中心 徐航考试日期：2014年7月19日Reading Passage 1Title:儿童与游戏（教育类）Question types:句子填空题判断题流程图填空文章内容回顾介绍了游戏对学龄前儿童的影响，科学家对十几个家庭做深入的实验测试，根据实验研究结果来完善游戏设计。部分答案分析：句子填空题：1. abilities2. parents3. siblings4. experienced判断题：TRUE, NOT GIVEN, TRUE, FALSE流程填空题：firm simplicityfull versionfeedback相关英文原文阅读PLAY IS A SERIOUS BUSINESSDoes play help develop bigger, better brains? Bryant Furlow investigatesA. Playing is a serious business. Children engrossed in a make-believe world, fox cubs play-fighting or kittens teaming a ball of string arent just having fun. Play may look like a carefree and exuberant way to pass the time before the hard work of adulthood comes along, but theres much more to it than that. For a start, play can even cost animals their lives. Eighty percent of deaths among juvenile fur seals occur because playing pups fail to sport predators approaching. It is also extremely expensive in terms of energy. Playful young animals use around two or three per cent of energy cavorting, and in children that figure can be closer to fifteen per cent. Even two or three per cent is huge, says John Byers of Idaho University. You just dont find animals wasting energy like that, he adds. There must be a reason.B. But if play is not simply a developmental hiccup, as biologists once thought, why did it evolve? The latest idea suggests that play has evolved to build big brains. In other words, playing makes you intelligent. Playfulness, it seems, is common only among mammals, although a few of the larger-brained birds also indulge. Animals at play often use unique signs tail-wagging in dogs, for example to indicate that activity superficially resembling adult behavior is not really in earnest. In popular explanation of play has been that it helps juveniles develop the skills they will need to hunt, mate and socialise as adults. Another has been that it allows young animals to get in shape for adult life by improving their respiratory endurance. Both these ideas have been questioned in recent years.C. Take the exercise theory. If play evolved to build muscle or as a kind of endurance training, then you would expect to see permanent benefits. But Byers points out that the benefits of increased exercise disappear rapidly after training stops, so many improvement in endurance resulting from juvenile play would be lost by adulthood. If the function of play was to get into shape, says Byers, the optimum time for playing would depend on when it was most advantageous for the young of a particular species to do so. But it doesnt work like that. Across species, play tends to peak about halfway through the suckling stage and then decline.D. Then theres the skills-training hypothesis. At first glance, playing animals do appear to be practicing the complex maneuvers they will need in adulthood. But a closer inspection reveals this interpretation as too simplistic. In one study, behavioral ecologist Tim Caro, from the University of California, looked at the predatory play of kittens and their predatory behavior when they reached adulthood. He found that the way the cats played had no significant effect on their hunting prowess in later life.E. Earlier this year, Sergio Pellis of Lethbridge University, Canada, reported that there is a strong positive link between brain size and playfulness among mammals in general. Comparing measurements for fifteen orders of mammals, he and his team found large brains (for a given body size) are linked to greater playfulness. The converse was also found to be true. Robert Barton of Durham University believes that, because large brains are more sensitive to developmental stimuli than smaller brains, they require more play to help mould them for adulthood. I concluded its to do with learning, and with the importance of environmental data to the brain during development, he says.F. According to Byers, the timing of the playful stage in young animals provides an important clue to whats going on. If you plot the amount of time juvenile devotes to play each day over the course of its development, you discover a pattern typically associated with a sensitive period a brief development window during which the brain can actually be modified in ways that are not possible earlier or later in life. Think of the relative ease with which young children but not infants or adults absorb language. Other researchers have found that play in cats, rats and mice is at its most intense just as this window of opportunity” reaches its peak.G. People have not paid enough attention to the amount of the brain activated by plays, says Marc Bekoff from Colorado University. Bekoff studied coyote pups at play and found that the kind of behaviour involved was markedly more variable and unpredictable than that of adults. Such behaviour activates many different parts of the brain, he reasons. Bekoff likens it to a behavioural kaleidoscope, with animals at play jumping rapidly between activities. They use behaviour from a lot of different contexts predation, aggression, reproduction, he says. Their developing brain is getting all sorts of stimulation.H. Not only is more of the brain involved in play that was suspected, but it also seems to activate higher cognitive processes. Theres enormous cognitive involvement in play, says Bekoff. He points out that play often involves complex assessments of playmates, ideas of reciprocity and the use of specialised signals and rules. He believes that play creates a brain that has greater behavioural flexibility and improved potential for learning later in life. The idea is backed up by the work of Stephen Siviy of Gettysburg College. Siviy studied how bouts of play affected the brains levels of particular chemical associated with the stimulation and growth of nerve cells. He was surprised by the extent of the activation. Play just lights everything up, he says. By allowing link-ups between brain areas that might not normally communicate with each other, play may enhance creativity.I. What might further experimentation suggest about the way children are raised in many societies today? We already know that rat pups denied the chance to play grow smaller brain components and fail to develop the ability to apply social rules when they interact with their peers. With schooling beginning earlier and becoming increasingly exam-orientated, play is likely to get even less of a look-in. Who knows what the result of that will be?题型难度分析第一篇难度较低，三个题型全部是顺序类题型。考生应感到比较轻松。题型技巧分析句子填空题：此题型一般没有压力，是顺序题型，需要注意定位和空格周围单词在文章中的对应关系。判断题：顺序题型，注意定位词和考点词，注意区分FALSE和NOT GIVEN的辨析，FALSE表示文章中有提到信息，并且与题目信息对立，NOT GIVEN是文章没有提及题目所问信息，所以考点词的推测对区分FALSE和NOT GIVEN有很大影响。流程填空题：该题型的特点就是遵循顺序原则，一般有箭头指向，表明事件发展顺序。需要通过图中已给的信息词来文章定位。属于较为简单的小题型，定位比较集中。剑桥雅思推荐原文练习剑4 Test 2 Passage 3Reading Passage 2Title:Ants Teach Ants（生物类）Question types:人名观点配对（NB）多选题（9选4）判断题文章内容回顾文章讨论了蚂蚁中是否存在leader。有四个科学家，各自讨论了自己的观点。一位科学家认为有，举例觅食过程中，蚂蚁会跟随领头的蚂蚁。其他三位科学家认为没有，列举了一些例子和研究结果。部分答案分析：人名观点配对的NB选2次的是A多选题：关于动物的活动，文中提到哪四个？正确答案：A. 使用触角去沟通 C. 警告其他的同伴有捕猎者D. 教小动物捕食 E判断题：一个NOT GIVEN, 一个NO, 两个YES相关英文原文阅读CommunicationAnts communicate with each other using pheromones, sounds, and touch. The use of pheromones as chemical signals is more developed in ants, such as the red harvester ant, than in other hymenopteran groups. Like other insects, ants perceive smells with their long, thin, and mobile antennae. The paired antennae provide information about the direction and intensity of scents. Since most ants live on the ground, they use the soil surface to leave pheromone trails that may be followed by other ants. In species that forage in groups, a forager that finds food marks a trail on the way back to the colony; this trail is followed by other ants, these ants then reinforce the trail when they head back with food to the colony. When the food source is exhausted, no new trails are marked by returning ants and the scent slowly dissipates. This behaviour helps ants deal with changes in their environment. For instance, when an established path to a food source is blocked by an obstacle, the foragers leave the path to explore new routes. If an ant is successful, it leaves a new trail marking the shortest route on its return. Successful trails are followed by more ants, reinforcing better routes and gradually identifying the best path.65Ants use pheromones for more than just making trails. A crushed ant emits an alarm pheromone that sends nearby ants into an attack frenzy and attracts more ants from farther away. Several ant species even use propaganda pheromones to confuse enemy ants and make them fight among themselves.66 Pheromones are produced by a wide range of structures including Dufours glands, poison glands and glands on the hindgut, pygidium, rectum, sternum, and hind tibia.62 Pheromones also are exchanged, mixed with food, and passed by trophallaxis, transferring information within the colony.67 This allows other ants to detect what task group (e.g., foraging or nest maintenance) other colony members belong to.68 In ant species with queen castes, when the dominant queen stops producing a specific pheromone, workers begin to raise new queens in the colony.69Some ants produce sounds by stridulation, using the gaster segments and their mandibles. Sounds may be used to communicate with colony members or with other species.7071LearningMany animals can learn behaviours by imitation, but ants may be the only group apart from mammals where interactive teaching has been observed. A knowledgeable forager of Temnothorax albipennis will lead a naive nest-mate to newly discovered food by the process of tandem running. The follower obtains knowledge through its leading tutor. The leader is acutely sensitive to the progress of the follower and slows down when the follower lags and speeds up when the follower gets too close.87Controlled experiments with colonies of Cerapachys biroi suggest that an individual may choose nest roles based on her previous experience. An entire generation of identical workers was divided into two groups whose outcome in food foraging was controlled. One group was continually rewarded with prey, while it was made certain that the other failed. As a result, members of the successful group intensified their foraging attempts while the unsuccessful group ventured out fewer and fewer times. A month later, the successful foragers continued in their role while the others had moved to specialise in brood care.88NavigationForaging ants travel distances of up to 200 metres (700 ft) from their nest 96 and scent trails allow them to find their way back even in the dark. In hot and arid regions, day-foraging ants face death by desiccation, so the ability to find the shortest route back to the nest reduces that risk. Diurnal desert ants of the genus Cataglyphis such as the Sahara desert ant navigate by keeping track of direction as well as distance travelled. Distances travelled are measured using an internal pedometer that keeps count of the steps taken 97 and also by evaluating the movement of objects in their visual field (optical flow).98Directions are measured using the position of the sun.99 They integrate this information to find the shortest route back to their nest.100 Like all ants, they can also make use of visual landmarks when available 101 as well as olfactory and tactile cues to navigate.102103 Some species of ant are able to use the Earths magnetic field for navigation.104 The compound eyes of ants have specialised cells that detect polarised light from the Sun, which is used to determine direction.105106 These polarization detectors are sensitive in the ultraviolet region of the light spectrum.107 In some army ant species, a group of foragers who bec