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過去這個週末學生考了 2019 年 6 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 6 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 6 月 (北美) SAT 考試閱讀文章
PASSAGE 1
This passage is adapted from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah. ©2013 by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The passage is set in a hair-braiding salon in New Jersey. Ifemelu is about to move back to Nigeria, where her former boyfriend Obinze lives.
Alfemelu decided then that she did not like Aisha at all. She wanted to curtail the conversation now, so that they would say only what they needed to say Line during the six hours it would take to braid her hair, and so she pretended not to have heard and instead brought out her phone. Feeling reckless, she composed an e-mail to Obinze and, without permitting herself to reread it, she sent it off. She had written that she was moving back to Nigeria and, even though she had a job waiting for her, even though her car was already on a ship bound for Lagos, it suddenly felt true for the first time. I recently decided to move back to Nigeria.
Aisha was pot discouraged. Once Ifemelu looked up from her phone, Aisha asked again, “How long you in America?”
Ifemelu took her time putting her phone back into her bag. Years ago, she had been asked a similar question, at a wedding, and she had said two years, which was the truth, but the jeer on the Nigerian’s face had taught her that, to earn the prize of being taken seriously among Nigerians in America, among Africans in America, indeed among immigrants in America, she needed more years. Six years, she began to say when it was just three and a half. Eight years, she said when it was five. Now that it was thirteen years, lying seemed unnecessary but she lied anyway.
“Fifteen years,” she said.
“Fifteen? That long time.” A new respect slipped into Aisha’s eyes. “You live here in Trenton?”
“I live in Princeton.”
“Princeton.” Aisha paused. “You student?” “I’ve just finished a fellowship,” she said, knowing that Aisha would not understand what a fellowship was, and in the rare moment that Aisha looked intimidated, Ifemelu felt a perverse pleasure. Yes, Princeton. Yes, the sort of place that Aisha could only imagine.
“But I’m going back home to Nigeria,” Ifemelu added, suddenly remorseful. ‘I’m going next week.”
“To see the family.”
“No I’m moving back. To live in Nigeria.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Why not?”
“Better you send money back. Unless your father is big man? You have connections?”
“I found a job there,” she said.
“You stay in America fifteen years and you just go back to work?” Aisha smirked. “You can stay there.” Aisha reminded her of what Aunty Uju had said, when she finally accepted that Ifemelu was serious about moving back— Will you be able to cope? —and the suggestion, that she was somehow irrevocably altered by America, had grown thorns on her skin. Her parents, too, seemed to think that she might not be able to “cope” with Nigeria. “At least you are now.
An American citizen so you can always return to America,” her father had said. Both of them had asked if Blaine would be coming with her, their question heavy with hope. It amused her how often they asked about Blaine now, since it had taken them a while to make peace with the idea of her black American boyfriend. She imagined them nursing quiet plans for her wedding: her mother would think of a caterer and colors, and her father would think of a distinguished friend he could ask to be the sponsor. Reluctant to flatten their hope, because it took so little to keep them hoping, which in turn kept them happy, she told her father, “We decided I will come back first and then Blaine will come after a few weeks.”
“Splendid,” her father said, and she said nothing else because it was best if things were simply left at splendid.
Aisha tugged a little too hard at her hair. “Fifteen years in America very long time,” Aisha said, as though she had been pondering this. “You have boyfriend? You marry?”
“I’m also going back to Nigeria to see my man,” Ifemelu said, surprising herself My man. How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives that we have imagined.
“Oh! Okay!” Aisha said, excited; Ifemelu had finally given her a comprehensible reason for wanting to move back. “You will marry?”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“Oh!” Aisha stopped twisting and stared at her in the mirror, a dead stare, and Ifemelu feared, for a moment, that the woman had clairvoyant powers and could tell she was lying.
PASSAGE 2
This passage and accompanying graph are adapted from Joel Kurtzman, Unleashing the Second American Century: Four Forces for Economic Dominance. ©2014 by Joel Kurtzman.
In the 1980s, when Japanese manufacturing processes were among the most advanced in the world, hundreds of articles and books were written Line about the Japanese challenge. Many focused on the just-in-time production process as a fundamental element of Japan’s success, Just in time (JIT) was a process for delivering component parts to factories when they were needed, thus eliminating the need for maintaining large, expensive parts inventories and warehouses.
It makes sense that JIT emerged in Japan, a country where real estate is scarce and expensive. Toyota, one of the developers of the process, saw no benefit in building expensive warehouses if it didn’t need to, or stockpiling windshields, wheels, or gears. Instead, it integrated its suppliers into its production processes so windshields and the other components would arrive at the factory just in time to be placed on the cars working their way through the assembly line.
But it didn’t take long—less than a decade—for this quintessential Japanese process to become a fundamental part of the American production process. In the United States, a much larger country than Japan, JIT production went well beyond the original concept. By the early 1990s, trucking, transportation, and shipping companies—Yellow, UPS, FedEx, and others set up their own massive regional distribution centers where parts could be shipped, kept for an hour or two, and then moved to the factory whcn they were needed. In a short span of time, this Japanese process became-Americanized as shipping and transportation companies transformed themselves from truck operators to logistics handling companies built around just-in-time deliveries. An idea hatched in Japan was perfected in the United States.
Transmuting—and sometimes even perfecting—ideas developed elsewhere is fundamental to the way America does business. And, while we chide ourselves unduly regarding what we believe to be a slow rate of change, the fact is that no other country changes more rapidly than we do—nor is any other country as open to new ideas.
These are generalizations, to be sure. But they carry more than a modicum of truth. The JIT concept is just one example of how this openness to new ideas plays out in real life. I could cite many others.
But there is an even more important side of American openness that often gets short shrift. It is of course, all well and good that we are open to ideas. More important, though, is our openness in our communities to new people, along with their ideas. This kind of openness is what truly gives us the power to grow, and it is more important than the power of concepts like just-in-time deliveries.
It goes without saying that we are not perfect. Prejudice certainly persists. But no country welcomes and accepts newly arrived people or has benefited more from that acceptance the way America has. This has given us a tremendous advantage—and a largely hidden one. According to a study by Vivek Wadhwa, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is also a professor at New York University, 24 percent of Silicon Valley’s startups were launched by foreign-born entrepreneurs, mostly Indian and Chinese, but also Israeli, Russian, French, and others. For example, Intel, the world’s most important maker of computer chips, was cofounded by Andrew Grove, a World War II refugee from Hungary. Google’s cofounder Sergey Brin is Russian-born Indian-born Vinod Khosla cofounded Sun Microsystems, and of the four cofounders of PayPal, two were born elsewhere-Max Levchin, who was born in Ukraine, and Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa. The French-born Pierre Omidyar, whose parents were from Iran, founded eBay. SanDisk, a leader in flash memory, was cofounded by Israel-born Eli Harari.
Passage 3
This page Is adapted from Rachel Gleeson, “How the Sea snake got its Stripes.” ©2010 by The University of Sydney.
We all know that looks matter, and for snakes, a colour which works well on land has dramatically different results under water, according to a recent study by biologists from the University of Sydney.
Professor Rick Shine and Dr Adele Pile from the School of Biological Sciences have discovered a sea snake’s colouration can influence its susceptibility to algal fouling which can reduce swimming speed by up to 20 percent.
Their study, reported this month in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, sheds new light on how the transition from terrestrial to aquatic life has shaped the evolution of sea snakes. Professor Shine said sea snakes evolved from venomous land snakes — such as the highly toxic tiger snake — who reinvaded the oceans around five million years ago.
“The fact that sea snakes have made the transition from terrestrial to aquatic life, makes them the perfect model to study evolution because we can compare traits between land snakes and sea snakes and hence identify selective forces unique to those habitats,” he said.
‘The shift from land to water brought with it a new set of challenges, and sea snakes evolved unique physical traits which enabled them to survive in the aquatic environment — a paddle-shaped tail for swimming, valves to close their nostrils and large lungs to provide oxygen while under water.
“Another consistent attribute of sea snakes involves coloration: most are banded rather than unicoloured, blotched or striped. Fouling by algae has also been reported in several groups of sea snakes, and we wondered if maybe a snake’s colour could influence its susceptibility to this.”
To test this hypothesis, the scientists turned to a population of sea snakes in the tropical Pacific, in which members of the same species ranged from jet black to brightly black-and-white banded, and many patterns in between. Over a four-year period, the researchers examined free ranging individuals and found that black snakes supported significantly more algal cover than black-and-white snakes.
“Once we knew there was a relationship between a snake’s colour and the amount of algal fouling, the next step was to determine if a snake’s dark colour was the actual cause of the higher algal levels,” Professor Shine said.
To do this, the researchers suspended plastic snake models—in black, white and black-and-white —in mid water and stored the amount of algal colonisation over the subsequent days. The results showed that colour directly affects the amount of algal growth, with black surfaces attracting the most algae, followed by black-and-white, and white the least.
“The spores of some marine algae settle out preferentially onto dark-coloured objects, which probably explains why the darker snakes hosted higher algal cover,” he said.
The finding raises the crucial question: if snake colour influences rates of algal accumulation, what are the consequences of such accumulation?
“The most obvious such consequence is increased drag and things became really interesting when we tested to see if algal cover affected a snake’s swimming speed. Our locomotor trials revealed a 20 percent reduction in swimming speeds in snakes covered with a heavy coating of algae.”
Differences in colour involving black versus banded varieties of land snakes typically have been attributed to differences in heat transfer—that is darker colours absorb more heat, even at the expense of looking more obvious to predators. But Professor Shine said temperature based explanations can’t be applied to the case in sea snakes.
“Unlike on land, colour does not affect the body temperatures of a snake under water. Our data suggests another potential fitness cost pf colour in sea snakes, and potentially that of other aquatic animals: susceptibility to algal fouling,” he said.
So why are some sea snakes black at all? Is there some hidden benefit to being black that outweighs the increased algal fouling?
“There is clearly a balance of costs and benefits of algal accumulation, which is why we see a variety of colours in the population. For example, a covering of seaweed may slow down the snake and reduce its ability to obtain oxygen from the water directly through its skin, because the algae form a barrier. But on the flip side, the algae might increase the snake’s oxygen availability, because of algal photosynthesis, and hence benefit the snake.”
Passage 4
Passage 115 adapted from Etienne-Gabriel Morelly, The Code of Nature. Originally published in 1755. Passage 2 is adapted from Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents. Originally published in 1930. Translation 02002 by David McLintock
Passage 1
The only vice that I perceive in the universe is Avarice; all the others, whatever name they be known by, are only variations, degrees of this one; it is… Line the basis, the vehicle, of all the vices. Analyze vanity, fatuousness, pride, ambition, duplicity, hypocrisy, dishonesty; break down most of our sophistic virtues into their component parts, and they all resolve themselves into this subtle and pernicious element, the desire to have. You will even friar the bottom of disinterestedness.
Now, would this universal plague, this slow fever, private interest, ever have been able to take hold if it had found no sustenance, nor even the slightest dangerous ferment?
I believe that no one will contest the justness of this proposition: that where no property exists, none of its pernicious consequences could exist…
I dare to conclude here that it is almost mathematically demonstrable that all division of goods, whether equal or unequal, and that all private property from among these portions is, in all societies, what Horace calls material for the highest evil.” All moral and political phenomena are the effects of this pernicious cause; through it can be explained and resolved all theorems or problems about the origin or advancement of, the connection or affinity between, the different virtues and vices, disorders and crimes; about the true motives behind good or bad actions about all the resolutions or perplexities of the human will, about the depravity of the passions; about the ineffectuality of precepts and laws that are meant to contain them;… finally, about all the monstrous productions that come from the aberrations of the mind or the heart, I say that the grounds for all these defects can be seen in the general tendency of legislators to allow the primary link of all sociability to be broken by the usurpation of the resources that should belong in common to all humanity….
Now, if you were to take away property, and the blind and pitiless self-interest that accompanies it, you would cause all the prejudices and errors that they sustain to collapse. There would be no more resistance, either offensive or defensive, among men; there would be no more furious passions, ferocious actions, notions nor ideas of moral evil.
Passage 2
Human beings are not gentle creatures in need of love, at most able to defend themselves if attacked; on the contrary, they can count a power tur share of aggression among their instinctual endowments, Hcncc, their neighbor is hot only a potential helper…, but also someone who tempts them to take out their aggression on him, to exploit his labor without recompense,… to take possession of his goods, to humiliate him and cause him pain… Homo homini lupus [Man is a wolf to man]. Who, after all that he has learnt from life and history, would be so sold as to dispute this proposition?
The communists think they have found the way to redeem mankind from evil. [According to them,’ man is unequivocally good and well disposed to his neighbor, but his nature has been corrupted by the institution of private property. Ownership of private property gives the individual the power, and so the temptation, to mistreat his neighbor whoever is excluded from ownership is bound to be hostile to the oppressor and rebel against him. When private property is abolished, when goods are held in common and enjoyed by all, ill will and enmity among human beings will cease. Because all needs will be satisfied, no one will have any reason to see another person as his enemy; everyone will be glad to undertake whatever work is necessary. I am not concerned with economic criticisms of the communist system; I have no way of knowing whether the abolition of private property is expedient and beneficial. But I can recognize the psychological presumption behind it as a baseless illusion. With the abolition of private property the human love of aggression is robbed of one of its tools, a strong once no doubt, but certainly not the strongest. No change has been made in the disparities of power and influence that aggression exploits in pursuit of its ends, or in its nature. Aggression was not created property, it prevailed with almost no restriction in primitive times, when property was very scanty. it already manifests itself in the nursery.
Passage 5
This passage is adapted from Bridget Stutchbury, The Private Lives of Birds. 02010 by Walker & Company. The blackcap is a species of songbird.
Populations of blackcaps in southern Germany and Austria that historically migrated to Portugal for the winter have, over the last thirty years, shown an Line increasing tendency instead to spend the winter in Britain. The first clue as to the origin of these British visitors came from occasional recaptures of birds that had been banded in Germany.
More complete mapping of migration came from analysis of stable isotopes in the birds’ claws. Claws grow very slowly and once the tissue is formed it does not incorporate new material (like hair and feathers), so it reflects the bird’s location a few months earlier, Researchers clipped the very tip of one claw of a sample of blackcaps returning to the breeding grounds in Germany, and found that about one-third of the population had recently been living in Britain.
This shift in migration direction, and distance, has a strong genetic basis. Researchers captured adults wintering in Britain, brought the birds back to aviaries in Germany, and then allowed the birds to pair up and breed. The young from parents who had used the new migration route were tested in early autumn to find out if they had inherited this behaviour from their parents. Although natural migration unfolds over thousands of kilometres, the behaviour car be studied in a cage. Individuals are put in a small, funnel-shaped cage with a wire roof, which is positioned where the bird can see the night sky. Many songbirds use the stars to tell north from south, and after sunset the direction in which the caged bird is attempting to travel, and its overall activity, are a measure of its true migration instinct. Young birds with British parents showed a clear tendency to migrate west and northwest (that is, toward Britain in real life), but host young taken from wild nests in the German population tried to go southwest as if their destination was Portugal.
The use of the new migration route has increased so rapidly in just a few decades because of recent evolution; individuals who inherit this gene from their parents subsequently have relatively high survival and reproductive success so the gene becomes more common each generation. The high number of bird feeders in Britain increases the winter survival of adults and may have made this new migration route possible by allowing those wandering individuals to return to breed.
Birds also get a head start on competition for breeding territories. The blackcaps who travelled to Britain began spring migration earlier than Portuguese birds and had a shorter distance cover, hence they arrived at the nesting areas earlier. Early arriving males claimed the best territories and early arriving females had high reproductive success by virtue of pairing with the best males on the best territories. Even in the wilds of Germany, birds tended pair up according to where they spent the winter, an indirect result of arrival time. This further increases the spread of the favorable gene because the British pairs produce young who also go to Britain, who in turn will produce grandchildren who have the same migration behaviour and advantage.
Though the tendency to head west versus southwest is genetically based, the earlier spring migration of birds wintering in Britain may involve little or no genetic change. The annual stages of a bird’s body (reproduction, feather moult, migration) are determined by changes in day length, which in turn trigger changes in the production of hormones that control the birds physiology. As the winter nears an end, the very rapid change in day length in Britain compared with more southerly latitudes triggers a faster change in hormones that stimulate growth of the ovaries and testes. Blackcaps overwintering in Britain respond more quickly to the increasing day lengths of spring and thus are ready to breed about twenty days sooner than their southern counterparts.
This recent change in migration behaviour appears to be driven by climate change. Decades ago, the occasional birds that did overwinter in Britain likely arrived on the breeding grounds too soon, when weather conditions could be harsh and food supplies low. With warmer springs, birds that arrive earlier on the breeding grounds do not pay a heavy price, and in fact out-produce blackcaps who overwinter at southerly latitudes.
2019年 6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6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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