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過去這個週末學生考了 2019 年 4 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 2019 年 4 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 2019 年 4 月 (北美) SAT 考試閱讀文章
PASSAGE 1
This passage is adapted from Cristina Hennquez, The Book of Unknown Americans: A novel 02014 by Cristina Henriquez. Celia is an immigrant from Panama.
One afternoon, I made chicharrones and carried them over to C,elia’s apartment.
She clapped her hands together in delight when she saw me and motioned for me to come inside.
“These are for you,” I said, holding out a foil- covered plate. She lifted a corner of the foil and sniffed. “Sabroso,” she said.
I loved how full her home felt, embroidered pillows on the couches, a curio stacked with milk glass bowls and recuerdo and folded tablecloths, red votives along the windowsills, spidery potted plants, woven rugs, unframed posters of Panama beaches on the walls, a box of rinsed beer bottles on the floor, a small radio on top of the refrigerator, a plastic bag filled with garlic hanging from a doorknob, a collection of spices clustered on a platter on the counter. The great accumulation of things almost the cracks in the walls and the stains on the floor and the scratches that clouded the windows.
“Mi casa es tn casa,” Celia joked as I looked around. “Isn’t that what Americans say?”
She poured cold, crackling Coca-Colas for both of us, and we sat on the couch, sipping them and taking small bites of the chicharrones. She looked just as she had the first time I met her impeccably pulled together, with a face full of makeup, fuchsia lips, chestnut-brown chin-length hair curled at the ends and tucked neatly behind her ears;small Old earrings. So unlike most of my friends,at home, who’used nothing but soap on rs their faces and a lot on their hands and who kept their hair pulled into ponytails, like mine, or simply combed after it had been washed and left to air-dry.
Celia told me about the provisions we would need for winter heavy coats and a stack of comforters and something called long underwear that made me laugh when she tried to describe it—and about a place called the Community House where they offered immigrant services if we needed them. She gossiped about people in the building. She told me that Micho Alvarez, who she claimed always wore his camera around his neck, had a sensitive side, despite the fact that he might look big and burly, and that Benny Quinto, who was close friends with Micho, had studied to be a priest years ago. She said that Quisqueya dyed her hair, which was hardly news— I had assumed as much when I met her. ‘It’s the most unnatural shade of red,” Celia said. “Rafael says it looks like she dumped a pot of tomato sauce on her head.” She chortled. “Quisqueya is a busybody, but it’s only because she’s so insecure. She doesn’t know how to connect with people. Don’t let her put you off.”
Celia began telling me about when she and Rafael and her boys had come here from Panama, fifteen years ago, after the invasion.
“So your son, he was born there?” I asked.
“I have two boys,” she said. “Both of them were born there. Enrique, my oldest, is away at college on a soccer scholarship. And there’s Mayor, who you met. He’s nothing at all like his brother. Rafa thinks we might have taken the wrong baby home from the hospital.” She forced a smile. “Just a joke, of course.”
She stood and lifted a framed picture from the end table. “This is from last summer before Enrique went back to school,” she said, handing it to me. “Micho took it for us.”
In the photo were two boys: Mayor, whom I recognized from the store, small for his age with dark, buzzed hair and sparkling eyes, and Enrique, who stood next to his brother with his arms crossed, the faint shadow of a mustache above his lip.
“What about you?” Celia asked. “Do you have other children besides your daughter?”
“Only her,” I said, glancing at my hands around the glass. The perspiration from the ice had left a ring of water on the thigh of my pants.
“And she’s going …” Celia trailed off, as though she didn’t want to say it out loud.
“To Evers.”
Celia nodded. She looked like she didn’t know what to say next, and I felt a mixture of embarrassment and indignation.
“It’s temporary,” I said. “She only has to go there for a year or two.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me.”
“She’s going to get better.”
“I’ve heard it’s a good school.”
“I hope so. It’s why we came.”
Celia gazed at me for a long time before she said, “When we left Panama, it was falling apart. Rafa and I thought it would be better for the boys to:grow up here. Even though Panama was where we had spent our whole lives. It’s amazing, isn’t it, what parents will for their children he pusher hand on mine. A benediction. From then, we were friends.
PASSAGE 2
This passage is adapted from ‘Extremist politics: Debating the nuts & bolts’ 02012 by Association for Psychological Science.
Voters need to understand the prosaic details of \ complex policies. Most have staked out positions on these issues, but they are not often reasoned positions, which take hard intellectual work. Most citizens opt instead of simplistic explanations, assuming wrongly that they comprehend the nuances of issues.
Psychological scientists have name tor this easy-, automatic, simplistic thinking: the illusion of explanatory depth. We strongly believe that we understand complex matters, when in fact we are clueless, and these false and extreme beliefs shape our preferences, judgments and actions—including our votes.
Is it possible to-shake such deep-rooted convictions? That’s the question that Philip Fernbach, a psychological scientist at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business, wanted to explore. Fernbach and his colleagues wondered if forcing people to explain complex policies in detail—not cheerleading for a position but really considering the mechanics of implementation—might force them to confront their ignorance and thus weaken their extremist stands on issues. They ran a series of lab experiments to test this idea.
They started by recruiting a group of volunteers in their 30s—Democrats, Republicans and Independents—and asking them to state their positions on a variety of issues, from a national flat tax a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. The volunteers indicated how strongly the felt about each issue, and also rated their own understanding of the issues. Then the volunteers were instructed to write elaborate explanations of two issues. If the issue was cap-and-trade, for example, they would first explain precisely what cap-and-trade means, how it is implemented, who it benefits and who it could hurt, the sources of carbon emissions, and so forth. They were not asked for value judgments about the policy or about the environment or business, but only for a highly detailed description of the mechanics of the policy in action.
Let’s be honest. Most of us never do this. Fernbach’s idea was that such an exercise would force many to realize just how little they really know about Is cap-and-trade, and confronted with their own ignorance, they would dampen their own enthusiasm. They would be humbled, and as a result take less extreme positions. And that’s just what happened. Trying—and failing—to explain complex policies o undermined the extremists’ illusions about being well-informed. They became more moderate in their views as a result.
Being forced to articulate the nuts and bolts of a policy is not the same as trying to sell that policy. In ; fact, talking about one’s views can often strengthen them. Fernbach believes it’s the slow, cognitive work—the deliberate analysis—that changes people’s judgments, but he wanted to check this in another experiment This one was very similar to the first, but 3 some volunteers, instead of explaining a policy, merely listed reasons for liking it.
The results were dear. Those who simply listed reasons for their positions—articulating their values—were less shaken in their views. They continued to think they understood the policies in their complexity—and, notably, they remained extreme in their passion for their positions.
Polarization tends to reinforce itself. People are unaware of their own ignorance, and they seek out information that bolsters their-views, often without knowing it. They also process information in biased ways, and they hang out with people like themselves. All of these psychological forces increase political extremism, and n. simple measure will change that. But forcing the candidates to provide concrete an elaborate plans, might be a start; it gives citizens a starting place.
Passage 3
This passage is adapted from ‘Rare Woodland Plant Uses ‘Cryptic Coloration’ to Hide from Predators: 2009 by American Journal of Botany, Inc.
It is well known that some animal species use camouflage to hide from predators. Individuals that are able to blend in to their surroundings and avoid being eaten are able to survive longer, reproduce, and thus increase their fitness (pass along their genes to the next generation) compared to those who stand out more. This may seem like a good strategy, and fairly common in the animal kingdom, but who ever heard of a plant doing the same thing?
In plants, the use of coloration or pigmentation as a vital component of acquiring food (e.g., photosynthesis) or as a means of attracting pollinators (e.g., flowers) has been well studied. However, variation in pigmentation as a means of escaping predation has received little attention. Matthew Klooster from Harvard University and colleagues empirically investigated whether the dried bracts on a rare woodland plant, Monotropsis odorata, might serve a similar purpose as the stripes on a tiger or the grey coloration of the wings of the peppered moth, namely to hide.
“Monotropsis odorata is a fascinating plant species, as it relies exclusively upon mycorrhizal fungus, that associates with its roots, for all of the resources.it needs to live,” notes Klooster.-“Because this plant no longer requires photosynthetic pigmentation green coloration) to produce its own energy, it is free to adopt a broader range of possibilities in coloration, much,like fungi or animals.”
Using a large population of Monotropsis odorata Koestes and colleagues experimentally removed the dried bracts that cover the 3- to 5-cm tall stems and flower buds of these woodland plants. The bracts are a brown color that resembles the leaf litter from which the reproductive stems emerge and cover the pinkish-purplecolored buds and deep purple stems. When Klooster and,colleagues measured the reflectance pattern (the percentage of light reflected at various wavelengths) of the different plant parts, they indeed found that the bracts functioned as camouflage, making the plant blend in with its surroundings; the bract reflectance pattern closely resembled that of the leaf litter, and both differed from that of the reproductive stem and flowers hidden underneath the bracts. Furthermore, they experimentally demonstrated that this camouflage actually worked to hide the plant from its predators and increased its fitness. Individuals with intact bracts suffered only a quarter of the herbivore damage and produced a higher percentage of mature fruits compared to those who bracts were removed.
“It has long been shown that animals use cryptic coloration (camouflage) as a defense mechanism to visually match a component of their natural environment, which facilitates predator avoidance,” Klooster said. We have now experimentally demonstrated that plants have evolved a similar strategy to-avoid their herbivores.
Drying its bracts early to hide its reproductive parts is a good strategy when the stems are exposed to ,predators for long periods of time: all the other species in the subfamily Monotropoideae have colorful fleshy bracts and are reproductively active for only a quarter of the length of time. Somewhat paradoxically, however Monotropsis odorata actually relies on animals for pollination and seed dispersal. How does it accomplish this when it is disguised as dead leaf material and is able to hide so well? The authors hypothesize that the flowers emit highly fragrant odors that serve to attract pollinators and seed dispersal agents; indeed they observed bumble bees finding and pollinating many reproductive stems that were entirely hidden by the leaf litter itself.
Passage 4
This passage is adapted from Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Originally published in 1790. Edmund Burke was a British politician and scholar. In 1789,, the French formed a new governmental body known as the National Assembly, ushering in the tumultuous period of political and social change known as the French Revolution.
To make a government•requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it-only requires to le go the rein. But to form a free government, that is to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind. This I do not find in those who take the lead in the National Assembly. Perhaps they are not so miserably deficient as they appear.,I rather believe it. It would put them below the common level of human understanding. But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders.at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators, the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the prudence of traitors, until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines and establishing powers that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.
But am I so unreasonable as to see nothing at all that deserves commendation in the indefatigable labors of this Assembly? I do not deny that, among an infinite number of acts of violence and folly, some good may have been done. They who destroy everything certainly will remove some grievance. They who make everything new have a chance that they may establish something beneficial. To give them credit for what they have done in virtue of the authority they have usurped, or which can excuse them in the crimes by which that authority has been acquired, it must appear that the same things could not have been accomplished without producing such a revolution. Most assuredly they might….Some usages have been abolished on just grounds, but they were such that if they had stood as they were to all eternity, they would little detract from the happiness and prosperity of any state. The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.
Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own. In the former, they have got an invaluable treasure. They are not, I think, without some causes of apprehension and complaint, but these they do not owe to their constitution but to their own conduct. I think our happy situation owing to our constitution, but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly, owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations as well as to what we have altered or superadded. Our people will find employment enough for a truly patriotic, free, and independent spirit in guarding what they possess from violation. I would not exclude alteration neither, but even wheal changed, it should be to preserve. I should be led to my remedy by a great grievance. In what I did, I should follow the example of our ancestors. I would make the reparation as nearly as possible in the style of the building. A politic caution, a guarded circumspection, a moral rather than a complexional timidity were among the ruling principles of our forefathers in their most decided conduct. Not being illuminated with the light of which the gentlemen of France tell us they have got so abundant a share, they acted under a strong impression of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind. He that had made them thus fallible rewarded them for having in their conduct attended to their nature. Let us imitate their caution if we wish_to deserve their fortune or to retain their bequests. Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and, standing on the firm ground of the British constitution, let us be satisfied to admire rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights the aeronauts of France.
Passage 5
Passage 1 is adapted from Rex Dalton,”Blast in the Past?’ 02007 by Nature Publishing Group. Passage 2 is adapted from Michael Balter,”What Caused a 1300-Year Deep Freeze?’ 02014 by American Association for the Advancement of Science. Clovis hunters are widely regarded as among the first people to inhabit North America.
Passage 1
At the 2007 American Geophysical Union’s meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, some two dozen scientists presented multiple studies arguing that a comet or asteroid exploded above or on the northern ice cap almost 13,000 years ago—showering debris across the North American continent and causing temperatures to plunge for the next millennium.
The team argues that its idea explains multiple observations: not only the climate cooling and the disappearance of the Clovis hunters, but also the near-simutaneous extinction of the continent’s large mammals.
Not all will be convinced. Several leading hypotheses already explain each of these three events. A change in ocean circulation is generally thought to have brought about the onset of the millennium-long, cooling, which is known as the Younger Dryas. This cooling might, in turn, have caused the Clovis hunters to disappear. And, if they had not previously been killed by disease or hunted t•extinction, the big prehistoric beasts may also•have been doomed by this change in climate.
The new evidence comes in the forth of geochemical analysis of sedimentary layers at 25 archaeological sites across North America-9 of them Clovi. Certain features of the layers, say the team, suggest that they contain debris formed by an extraterrestrial impact. These include spherules of glass and carbon, and amounts of the element iridium said to be too high to have originated on Earth. In addition, the rocks’contain black layers of carbonized material, which the team says are the remains of wildfires that swept across the continent after the impact
Passage 2
Proponents of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis have claimed various kinds of evidence for the hypothesis, including deposits of the element iridium (rare on Earth but abundant in meteorites), microscopic diamonds (called nanodiamonds), and magnetic particles in deposits at sites supposedly dated to about 12,800 years ago. These claims were sharply contested by some specialists in the relevant fields, however, who either did not detect such evidence or argued that the deposits had other ca than a cosmic impact. For example, some say that nanodiamonds are common in ordinary geological formations, and that magnetic particles could come from ordinary fires.
Now comes what some researchers consider the -” 1 ) strongest attack yet on Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. Ina paper published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy,of Sciences, a team led by David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, in Texas, looks at the dating of 29 different sites in the . Americas, Europe, and the Middle East in which impact advocates have-reported evidence for a cosmic collision. They include sites in which sophisticated stone projectiles called Clovis points, used by some of ) the earliest Americans to hunt mammals beginning about 13,000 years ago, have been found. The team argues that when the quality and accuracy of the dating—which was based on radiocarbon and other techniques—is examined closely, only three of the 29 5 sites actually fall within the time frame of the Younger Dryas onset, about 12,800 years ago; the rest were probably either earlier or later by hundreds (and in one case, thousands) of years.
“The supposed Younger Dryas impact fails on ) both theoretical and empirical grounds,” says Meltzer, who adds that the popular appeal of the hypothesis is probably due to the way that it provides “simple explanations for complex problems.” Thus, “giant chunks of space debris clobbering the planet and 5 wiping out life on Earth has undeniably broad appeal,” Meltzer says,whereas “no one in Hollywood makes movies” about more nuanced explanations, such as Clovis points disappearing because early Americans turned to other forms of stone tool technology as the ) large mammals they were hunting went extinct as a result of the changing climate or hunting pressure.
But impact proponents appear unmoved by the new study. “We still stand fully behind the [impact hypothesis], which is based on more than a confluence of dates,” says Richard Firestone, a nuclear chemist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. “Radiocarbon dating is a perilous process,” he contends, adding that the presence of Clovis artifacts and mammoth bones just under the claimed iridium, nanodiamond, and magnetic sphere deposits is a more reliable indicator that an extraterrestrial event was responsible for their disappearance.
2019年 4月 (北美) SAT 考試閱讀題目
Ivy-Way 學生在上課的過程就會做到2019年4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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