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過去這個週末學生考了 2018 年 10 月的 SAT 考試。如果這是你最後一次考 SAT，恭喜你完成了一個艱難的任務！
這裡，我們整理了 2018 年 10 月 SAT 考試當中的 5 篇閱讀文章，幫助學生準備未來的考試。
這些閱讀文章可以如何的幫助你？
1. 這些文章可以讓你知道你的英文程度以及準備考試的程度
首先，讀這些文章。你覺得他們讀起來很簡單還是很難？裡面有沒有很多生字，尤其是那些會影響你理解整篇文章的生字？如果有的話，雖然你可能是在美國讀書或讀國際學校、也知道 “如何讀跟寫英文”，但你還沒有足夠的生字基礎讓你 “達到下一個階段” （也就是大學的階段）。查一下這一些字，然後把它們背起來。這些生字不見得會在下一個 SAT 考試中出現，但是透過真正的 SAT 閱讀文章去認識及學習這些生字可以大大的減低考試中出現不會的生字的機率。
2. 這些文章會告訴你平時應該要讀哪些文章幫你準備閱讀考試
在我們的 Ivy-Way Reading Workbook（Ivy-Way 閱讀技巧書）的第一章節裡，我們教學生在閱讀文章之前要先讀文章最上面的開頭介紹。雖然你的 SAT 考試不會剛好考這幾篇文章，但你還是可以透過這些文章找到它們的來源，然後從來源閱讀更多相關的文章。舉例來說，如果你看第二篇文章 “The Problem with Fair Trade Coffee”，你會看到文章是來自 Stanford Social Innovation Review。閱讀更多來自 Stanford Social Innovation Review 的文章會幫助你習慣閱讀這種風格的文章。
3. 這些文章會幫助你發掘閱讀單元的技巧（如果閱讀單元對你來說不是特別簡單的話）
如果你覺得閱讀單元很簡單，或是你在做完之後還有剩幾分鐘可以檢查，那麼這個技巧可能就對你來說沒有特別大的幫助。但是，如果你覺得閱讀很難，或者你常常不夠時間做題，一個很好的技巧是先理解那一種的文章對你來說比較難，然後最後做這一篇文章。SAT 的閱讀文章包含這五種類型：
- 文學 (literature)：1 篇經典或現代的文學文章（通常來自美國）
- 歷史 (History)：1 篇跟美國獨立/創立相關的文章，或者一篇受到美國獨立 / 創立影響的國際文章（像是美國憲法或者馬丁路德金恩 (Martin Luther King Jr.) 的演說）
- 人文 (Humanities)：1 篇經濟、心理學、社會學、或社會科學的文章
- 科學 (Sciences)：1-2 篇地理、生物、化學、或物理的文章
- 雙篇文 (Dual-Passages)：0-1 篇含有兩篇同主題的文章
舉例來說，假設你覺得跟美國獨立相關的文章是你在做連續的時候覺得最難的種類，那你在考試的時候可以考慮使用的技巧之一是把這篇文章留到最後再做。這樣一來，如果你在考試到最後時間不夠了，你還是可以從其他比較簡單文章中盡量拿分。
所有 2018 年 10 月 (亞洲) SAT 考試閱讀文章
PASSAGE 1
This passage is adapted from Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance. ©1995 by Rohinton Mistry. Maneck Kohlah, a teenager from a remote mountain village in India, has been away at boarding school. A new road has just been built to the village, where Maneck’s famliy owns a store.
The promised rewards began rolling up the road into the mountains. Lorries big as houses transported goods from the cities and fouled the air with their exhaust. Service stations and eating places sprouted along the routes to provide for the machines and their men. And developers began building luxury hotels.
That year, when Maneck came home for the holidays, he was puzzled (and later alarmed) to discover his father perpetually irritable. They found it impossible to get through the day without quarrelling, breaking into argument even in the presence of customers.
“What’s the matter with him?” Maneck asked his mother. “When I’m here, he ignores me or fights with me. When I’m at school, he writes letters saying how much he misses me.”
“You have to understand,” said Mrs. Kohlah, “people change when times change. It does not mean he doesn’t love you.”
Stomach churning, Mr. Kohlah was absorbed in watching the growth of development in the hills. His friends and he agreed it was a malevolent growth. The possibility of increased business at the General Store was no consolation. All his senses were being assaulted by the invasion. The noxious exhaust from lorries was searing his nostrils, he told Mrs. Kohlah, and the ugly throbbing of their engines was ripping his eardrums to shreds.
Wherever he turned, he began to see the spread of shacks and shanties. It reminded him of the rapidity with which the mange had overtaken his favourite dog. The destitute encampments scratched away at the hillsides, the people drawn from every direction by stories of construction and wealth and employment. But the ranks of the jobless always exponentially outnumbered the jobs, and a hungry army sheltered permanently on the slopes. The forests were being devoured for firewood; bald patches materialized upon the body of the hills.
Then the seasons revolted. The rain, which used to make things grow and ripen, descended torrentially on the denuded hills, causing mudslides and avalanches. Snow, which had provided an ample blanket for the hills, turned skimpy. Even at the height of winter the cover was ragged and patchy.
Mr, Konian feft a perverse satisfaction at nature’s rebellion. It was a vindication of sorts: he was not alone in being appalled. But when the seasonal disorder continued year after year, he could take no comfort in it. The lighter the snow cover, the heavier was his heart.
Maneck said noting, though he thought his father was being overly dramatic when he declared. “Taking a walk is like going into a war zone:’ Mrs. Kohlah had never been one for walking. “I prefer to enjoy the view from my kitchen,* she said whenever her husband invited her. “It’s less tiring.”
But for Mr. Kohlah, long, solitary rambles were the great pleasure of his life, especially after winter, when every outing was graced by delicious uncertainty—what lay round the next bend? A newborn rivulet, perhaps? Wildflowers he had not noticed yesterday? Among his more awesome memories was a mighty boulder riven by a shrub growing out of it. Sometimes he was the victim of a sweet ambush: a prospect of the valley from a hitherto unseen ankle.
Nowadays, every stroll felt like a deathwatch, to see what was still standing and what had been felled. Coming upon a favourite tree, he would stop under its branches a while before moving on. He would run his hand along the gnarled trunk, happy that an old friend had survived another day. Many of the rocky ledges that he used to sit on to watch the sunset had been removed by dynamite. When he did find one, he rested for a few minutes and wondered if it would be here for him the next time.
Before long they began talking in town about him. “Mr. Kohlah’s screw is getting a little loose they said. “H a speaks to trees and rocks, and pats them like they were his dogs.”
When Maneck heard the gossip, he burned with shame, wishing his father would stop this embarrassing behaviour. He also boiled with anger, wishing to slap some sense into the ignorant, insensitive people.
PASSAGE 2
This passage is excerpted from a speech delivered by African American composer and musician Edward Kennedy”Duke” Ellington to a group of Los Angeles, California, churchgoers on February 12, 1941.
There is a good deal of talk in the world today. Some view that as a bad sign. One of the Persian poets, lamenting the great activity of men’s tongues, cautioned them to be silent with the reminder that, “In much of your talking, thinking is half-murdered”. This is true no doubt. Yet in this day when so many men are silent because they are afraid to speak—indeed, have been forbidden to speak—I view the volubility of the unrestricted with great 1 satisfaction. Here in America, the silence of Europe—silent, that is, except for the harsh echoes of the dictators’ voices—has made us conscious of our privileges of free speech, and like the dumb suddenly given tongue, or the tongue-tied eases of restraint, we babble and bay to beat the band. Singly, as individuals, we don’t say much of consequence perhaps, but put together, heard in chorus, the blustering half-truths, the lame and halting logic, the painfully sincere convictions of Joe and Mary Doaks’ compose a powerful symphony which, like the small boy’s brave whistle in the dark, serves notice on the hobgoblins that we are not asleep, not prey to the unchallenged attack. And so it is with the idea in mind of adding my bit to the meaningful chorus that I address you briefly this evening.
I have been asked to take as the subject of my remarks the title of a very significant poem, “We, Too, Sing America:’ written by the distinguish poet and author Langston Hughes.
In the poem, Mr. Hughes argues the case for democratic recognition of the Negro on the basis of the Negro’s contribution to America, a contribution of labor, valor, and culture. One hears that argument repeated frequently in the race press, from the pulpit and rostrum. America is reminded of the feats of Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, black armies in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the World War. Further, forgetful America is reminded that we sing without false notes, as borne out by the fact that there are no records of black traitors in the archives of American history. This is all well and good, but I believe it to be only half the story.
We play more than a minority role in singing “America:’ Although numerically but 10 percent of the mammoth chorus that today, with an eye overseas, sings “America” with fervor and thanksgiving, I say our 10 percent is the very heart of the chorus: the sopranos, so to speak, carrying the melody; the rhythm section of the band; the violins, pointing the way.
I contend that the Negro is the creative voice of America, is creative America, and it was a happy day in America when the first unhappy slave was landed on its shores. There, in our tortured induction into this “land of liberty:’ we built its most graceful civilization. Its wealth, its flowering fields, its handsome homes, its pretty traditions, its guarded leisure, and its music were all our creations.
We stirred in our shackles, and our unrest awakened justice in the hearts of a courageous few, and we re-created in America the desire for true democracy, freedom for all, the brotherhood of man, principles on which the country had been founded.
We were freed and as before, we fought America’s wars, provided her labor, her music, kept alive her flickering conscience, prodded her on toward the yet unachieved goal, democracy, until we became more than a part of America! We—this kicking, yelling, touchy, sensitive, scrupulously demanding minority—are the personification of the ideal begun by the Pilgrims almost 350 years ago.
It is our voice that sang “America” when America grew too lazy, satisfied, and confident to sing, before the dark threats and fire-lined clouds of destruction frightened it into a thin, panicky quaver.
We are more than a few isolated instances of courage, valor, achievement. We’re the injection, the shot in the arm, that has kept America and its gotten principles alive in the fat and corrupt years intervening between our divine conception and our near-tragic present.
Passage 3
This passage is adapted from Callum M. Roberts et al., “Effects of Marine Reserves on Adjacent Fisheries.” ©2001 by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Marine reserves, areas that are closed to all fishing, have been attracting much attention for their dual potential as conservation and fishery management tools. A synthesis of more than 100 studies of reserves worldwide shows that protection from fishing leads to rapid increases in biomass, abundance, and average size of exploited organisms and to increased species diversity. Such effects are of great interest to fishery managers because rebuilding exploited populations in reserves offers prospects of fishery enhancement.
Because reserves contain more and larger fish, protected populations can potentially produce many times more offspring than can exploited populations. In some cases, studies have estimated order-of-magnitude differences in egg production. Increased egg output is predicted to supply adjacent fisheries through export of offspring on ocean currents. In addition, as protected stocks build up, reserves are predicted to supply local fisheries through density-dependent spillover of juveniles and adults into fishing grounds.
Whereas the effects of reserves within their boundaries have strong empirical support, evidence that they enhance fisheries is sparse. Several studies have suggested export by showing higher densities of exploited species or greater catch per unit effort adjacent to reserve borders. When a reserve in the Philippines was reopened to fishing, catches collapsed in nearby areas, which suggests that the reserve had previously supported fisheries. Catches rose again after renewed compliance. However, none of these studies showed an increase in total production after reserve creation. We investigated the effects on neighboring fisheries of marine reserves in Saint Lucia.
The Soufriere Marine Management Area (SMMA) was created in 1995 along the southwest coast of the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. It encompasses 11 km of coast and includes a network of five marine reserves that constitute about 35% of coral reef fishing grounds. This network was designed to rehabilitate the severely overexploited reef fishery.
The marine reserves had a rapid impact on reef fish populations. Visual censuses of reserves and adjacent fishing areas revealed that combined biomass of five commercially important fish families tripled in reserves in 3 years. Biomass doubled in adjacent fishing areas, despite redirection of fishing effort from reserves. In the last 2 years, biomass held fairly steady, with further increases probably prevented by damage to reefs from Hurricane Lenny in late 1999.
We studied the reef fishery in the SMMA for two 5-month periods, in 1995-1996, immediately after reserves were created, and in 2000-2001, after 5 years of protection. We collected data from two trap-fishing methods—large traps soaked overnight and small drop-and-lift traps, baited and soaked for 1 or 2 hours—that account for 70% of fish caught. Catches increased significantly between 1995-1996 and 2000-2001. Mean total catch per trip for fishers with large traps increased by 46%, and for fishers with small traps by 90%. Catch per trap increased 36% for big traps and by 80% for small traps.
Our findings indicate that in 5 years, reserves have led to improvement in the SMMA fishery, despite the 35% decrease in area of fishing grounds. There were more fish in the sea, and evidence for little initial impact of reserves on total catches in the first year of implementation, together with constant fishing effort since protection began, indicates a greater weight of total landings. Interviews with local fishers (conducted in Creole via an interpreter) showed that most felt better off with reserves than without. Younger fishers were especially positive about the benefits.
Passage 4
This passage is adapted from Joseph Stromberg, “A Book’s Vocabulary is Different if it Was Written during Hard Economic Times.”02014 by Smithsonian Institution.
If, in the distant future, archaeologists find no trace of evidence of our civilization apart from a library of 20th century novels, They might be able to figure out something surprising about recent history: the boom times and recessions of our economic system.
A study by a team of British researchers published recently in the journal PLOS ONE found a strong correlation between a book’s “literary misery index” (the frequency of words such as “anger:’ “disgust:’ “fear:’ and “sadness”) and the economic misery index (a measure of unemployment and inflation) of either the U.S. or Britain for the ten years that preceded its publication.
The graph of the average amount of misery in English-language books over the course of me 20th century, in other words, closely tracked the peaks and valleys in the number of Americans and Brits out of work. “It looked like Western economic history, but just shifted forward by a decade: said Alex Benfley, lead author of the study and an anthropologist at the University of Bristol, in a press statement.
The researchers created the graph of literary misery by examining the frequency of words of roughly five million digitized books published in English during the 20th century in the U.S., Britain and other parts of the world. Available via Google’s Ngram viewer, the variety and distribution of every word used in these books was already catalogued, so the researchers simply had to run an algorithm that compared the frequency of sad words with that of happy ones.
Their analysis showed that, in the U.S., literary misery peaked in the early 1940s, just after the Great Depression. It dipped during the 50s, following the economic boom driven by the country’s entry into World War II, and then slowly rose again during the 70s and 80s, after years of economic stagnation, rising unemployment and relatively high inflation rates.
There are a few possible reasons for the ten-year lag. The most obvious is that writing books takes time—for most authors, years—so a book begun in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s might not be published until the next decade.
Alternately, it’s possible that the lag is a quirk of the way literature is shaped by authors’ childhood experiences. “Perhaps this ‘decade effect reflects the gap between childhood when strong memories are formed, and early adulthood, when authors may begin writing books,” Bentley said. “Consider for example, the dramatic increase of literary misery in the 1980s, which follows the ‘stagflation’ of the 1970s Children from this generation who became authors would have begun writing in the 1980s.”
To check whether the correlation between literary and economic misery in the English canon was a coincidence, the researchers also performed the sam analysis on a catalogue of some 650,000 German books. When compared to German economic conditions, they found the same trend.
Of course, this correlation, whether in the U.S., Great Britain or Germany, might not come as a huge shock—obviously, the circumstances that surround an author influence his or her word choices. But the fact that the signal of economic times could be consistently spotted through the noise of all of an author’s personal circumstances is still somewhat surprising, and shows what a profound effect economics have on our creative mindsets. As Benfle; put it, “global economics is part of the shared emotional experience of the 20th century”.
Passage 5
Passage 1 is adapted from Pablo G. Guerenstein et al., “Floral CO2 Emission May Indicate Food Abundance to Nectar-Feeding Moths.”02004 by Springer-Verlag. Passage 2 is adapted from Elia Ben-Ari, “Better Communicating through Chemistry:’ ©2008 by American institute of Biological Sciences.
Passage 1
The ability to sense subtle variations in ambient CO2 concentration is well established among moths. CO, receptor cells are located in a sensory organ, the labial-palp pit organ (LPO). Morphological studies have shown that this organ contains up to 2,000 receptor cells, and physiological experiments have revealed that those sensory cells respond specifically to CO2 with high sensitivity. For most species of moths, however, the roles of sensory information about ambient CO2 are unclear.
The existence of CO2 gradients in their natural habitats has led to several hypotheses about the significance of CO2 information for moths. The strongest evidence for the use of CO2 information by moths came from a study of the use of local CO2 gradients by adult Cactoblastis cactorum. The LPO of C. cactorum is larger in females than in males, and it was suggested that probing the surface of host plants with the labial palps might inform female moths about metabolically more active parts of the plants in order to identify high-quality oviposition sites [locations to lay eggs].
In the hawkmoth Manduca sexta, the LPO is large and apparently not sexually dimorphic, suggesting that in this species, CO2 information could be similarly important for both males and females. We speculated, therefore, that information about ambient CO2 could be valuable for functions other than, or in addition to, oviposition. Manduca species, which feed as adults, possess a more elaborate LPO than that of moths that do not feed as adults. We hypothesize, therefore, that Manduca might use its CO2-sensing system to detect the high metabolic activities of flowers and thus to locate profitable nectar sources.
Passage 2
When the hawkmoth Manduca sexra catches scent of a flower on which it can feed, it flies in a zigzag pattern as it tracks the odor to its source. Then, hovering over the bloom like a helicopter, the month extends its long proboscis to probe the flower and dine on nectar.
As in other pollinator-plant interactions, the hawkmoth uses cues such as flower color, shape, fragrance, and texture to find and evaluate Dowers as potential food sources. But recent studies suggest that floral carbon dioxide (CO2), which is associated with nectar production and increased respiratory activity, may also play a role in interactions between flowers and their insect pollinators.
In the Sonoran Desert, the hawkmoth is the primary pollinator of the night-blooming Dotura wrighrii. Datura’s large white flowers open explosively at dusk, releasing CO2 at concentrations much higher than ambient levels. Manduca sexra moths have a special G02-sensing organ, and a 2004 study showed that male hawkmoths wilt choose an artificial flower emitting higher than ambient CO2 levels over one emitting ambient levels.
In a paper published in 2008, Cornell University doctoral student Joaquin Goyret and colleagues provided new details on how floral CO2 affects the behavior of both male and female M. sexta moths. Goyret, Poppy Markwefl, and senior author Robert Raguso examined the behavioral responses of hawkmoths to scentless white paper flowers and to paper flowers with a floral scent, with CO2 or with both scent and CO2. They found that CO2 like floral odor, attracted male and female moths from a distance and elicited the characteristic zigzag tracking behavior. But CO2 did not trigger flower-probing behavior.
Surprisingly, when moths were given a choice between a fake flower emitting floral scent alone and an identical flower emitting scent plus CO2 the males preferred scented flowers with high CO2 levels, but females chose randomly. “That’s when we started putting things together,” Goyret says. Other researchers had observed that female hawkmoths, which lay their eggs on the underside of leaves, often feed and lay eggs on the same host plant in a single visit if the plant has nectar-rich flowers. So Goyret. and coworkers added odors from host-plant leaves to the mix in their choice experiments with fake flowers. “Now the females also started choosing the flowers emitting high levels of CO2, ” he says; Taken together with observations by others that female M. sexta lay more eggs on plants with experimentally increased amounts of nectar, the new findings suggest that female moths are using CO2 as distance cue to find plants that not only are a good source of nectar but also will be high-quality hosts for their egg and larvae.
2018年 10月 (亞洲) SAT 考試閱讀題目
Ivy-Way 學生在上課的過程就會做到2018年10月以及其他的官方歷年考題。除此之外，我們也有讓學生來我們的教室或在家做模考的服務讓學生評估自己的學習進度並看到成績。如果你想預約時間來我們的教室或在家做模考，請聯繫我們！
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