過去這個週末學生考了 2020 年 12 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 2020 年 12 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 2020 年 12 月 (亞洲/國際) SAT 考試閱讀文章
Passage 1
This passage is from Anita Desai, Translator Translated. ©2011 by Anita Desai. The narrator is working on an English-language translation of a novel by Suvarna Devi, who wrote in Oriya, a language native to India. The narrator has just met with her editor, Tara.
Tara has not asked me a single question about my
involvement with this language. I had been given no
opportunity to explain how I came about it, what it
meant to me and why, while teaching the usual,
accepted course of English literature in a women’s
college, I had maintained my commitment to it. I
could have told her so much, so much—but was
given no chance and so I had to keep the information
withheld, a secret. No one knew what a weight that
exerted, one I longed to relieve.
But, getting off the bus and climbing the stairs to
my room at the top, I found I could, in a quite
miraculous way, unload myself of that weight. As
soon as I took out the little paperback—its pages
werecomingloosefromthebinding,Inoticed—and
pulled a piece of paper to me and began to translate
the first line, it was as if I had been given a magic key
that would open the rest.
‘It started to rain. It was getting dark.’
But no—immediately I could see how blunt that
looked, how lacking in spirit. Where was the music,
the lilt of the original?
‘Rain began to fall. The village was in darkness.’
Yes, and yes. How easy to see that these words
worked, the others did not. I hurried on, hurried
while that sense lasted of what was right, what was
wrong, an instinct sometimes elusive which had to be
courted and kept alert. Selecting, recognising,
acknowledging. I was only the conduit, the medium
between that language and this—but I was the one
doing the selecting, the discriminating, and I was the
only one who could; the writer herself could not. I
was interpreting the text for her because I had the
power—too strong a word perhaps, but the ability,
yes. I was also the one who knew what she meant,
what worlds her words evoked. They were not mine
but they were my mother’s. I barely remembered her
or those earliest years spent in her lap; I only
imagined I did. I was not sure if I had ever seen the
shefali tree’s night-blooming flowers in the morning,
or the pond where blue lotuses bloomed and
intoxicated bumblebees buzzed, or heard the sound
of cattle lowing as they made their way homewards at
twilight, but at some subconscious level, I found I
knew them just as she did. Translating Suvarna
Devi’s words and text into English was not so
different, I thought, from what she herself must have
felt when writing them in her own language, which
was, after all, a kind of translation too—from seeing
and hearing and feeling into syntax. And I, who had
inherited the language, understood it and understood
her in a way no one else could have done, by instinct
and empathy. The act of translation brought us
together as if we were sisters—or even as if we were
one, two compatible halves of one writer.
Of course there were instances—small
stumbles—when I could not find the exact word or
phrase. In Suvarna Devi’s language, each word
conjured a whole world; the English equivalent, I had
to admit, did not. Cloud, thunder, rain. Forest and
pool. Rooster and calf. How limited they sounded if
they could not evoke the scene, its sounds and
scents—images without shadows. Perhaps an
adjective was needed. Or two, or three.
I tried them out. In the original, adjectives were
barely used, but I needed them to make up for what
was lost in the translation. Of course I could see that
restraint was called for, I had to hold fast. Not too
fast, though. A middle way. A golden mean.
I laughed out loud and struck my forehead with
my hand to think of all the different strains and
currents of my life and how they were coming into
play. I had never felt such power, never had such
power, such joy in power. Or such confusion.
I stopped only when I became aware it was night
outside, the crows silent, the street lights burning, the
traffic thinning, its roar subsiding into a tired growl.
The television set in my landlady’s flat was turned
on, the evening soap opera at full volume—and I
hadn’t even noticed it earlier.
Passage 2
This passage is adapted from Mario Livio, Why? What Makes Us Curious. ©2017 by Mario Livio.
Research has suggested that curiosity in children
is often related to the discovery of the causal
relationships that govern the child’s environment. If
this inference is correct, however, then it also makes
for a very clear and interesting prediction: children’s
curiosity should especially be piqued by and focused
on exploring those situations in which their
expectations are violated. This prediction can be
tested by examining how exploration and learning
are affected when the observed evidence contradicts
prior beliefs.
Elizabeth Bonawitz, Laura Schulz, and their
colleagues attempted to do precisely that through a
series of extensive studies. In one carefully planned
experiment, the researchers asked children to
scrutinize nine asymmetric blocks of Styrofoam that
could be stabilized on a balancing rod. In an initial
“belief-classification” task, the researchers closely
observed whether the children were attempting to
balance the blocks at the geometric center of their
base, in the middle of the base of the block, or at their
perceived center of mass, closer to the heavier end.
The experimenters took hold of the block just before
the children could stably set it on the post so that the
children did not get a chance to actually see whether
or not the block was balanced. In this way, the
researchers created a group of children (with a mean
age of six years and ten months) with a known prior
bias toward the geometric center as the balancing
point, and a group of somewhat older, more
experienced children (mean age of seven years and
five months) with a prior belief in the center of mass
as a balancing spot. They also had a group of younger
children (mean age of five years and two months)
who had no prior “theory” about the balancing point
and who therefore tended to balance blocks simply
by trial and error.
In the second stage, all the groups were shown
blocks that appeared to be in perfect equilibrium on
the rod. That, however, is when things started to get
interesting. Children with “geometric center” and
“center of mass” theories who were shown identical,
balanced configurations explored the blocks
differently, depending on their prior beliefs. When
the children were shown a block balanced at its
center of mass (consistent to the center-of-mass
“theorists” but belief-violating to the geometric-
center “theorists”), those who had their belief defied
spent more time exploring the block, while the others
preferred to examine a new toy. The behavior of the
two groups that had prior theories was reversed
when the block was balanced at its geometric center.
The children who had no prior theory always
preferred the new, untried item, irrespective of the
evidence presented to them.
In related experiments, the researchers showed
the children that the precisely balanced blocks were
actually held in their place by a magnet. The
reactions of the different groups were again
interesting. Both the geometric-center group and the
center-of-mass group used the new element—the
magnet—in an attempt to explain the evidence, but
only in those cases in which their prior beliefs had
been at odds with the new observations. That is,
geometric-center theorists who saw the block
balanced at its center of mass concluded that this was
only because the block was held in place by the
magnet. The same was true for center-of-mass
believers who were presented with a block balanced
at its geometric center. Moreover, in experiments in
which the presence of the magnet was not revealed,
the children used the new evidence of the belief-
violating balanced block as a motivating force to
rethink and revise their predictions. They did not feel
compelled to change their beliefs if an auxiliary
explanation (in this case, the presence of the magnet)
was available.
Passage 3
This passage is adapted from Elizabeth Preston, “Bacteria Help Pitcher Plants Trap Prey.” ©2016 by Kalmbach Publishing Co.
Pity the insect that tumbles into a pitcher plant’s
trap. The slippery walls and waiting pool of water
ensure it won’t clamber back out. There’s nothing
left to do but wait to be digested.
The California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia
californica) is also called the cobra lily for its
curled-over shape that hides its exit from its victims.
Unlike other pitcher plants, it doesn’t fill its trap
from above with rainwater but from below, drawing
water up with its roots. But like others, it seems to
use bacteria living in that well to help digest its prey.
The bacteria perform another role too: making
the liquid even harder for an insect to escape than
ordinary water.
Nearly a century ago, scientists first noticed that
the water in the traps of some pitcher plant species
had unusually low surface tension. This means an
insect that’s used to safely tiptoeing across puddles
suddenly finds itself drowning inside a pitcher plant.
But the reason for this extra-deadly water wasn’t
clear. In 2007, Laurence Gaume and Yoel Forterre of
France’s CNRS (French National Centre for
Scientific Research) studied the liquid of the pitcher
plant Nepenthes rafflesiana and found that it has
so-called viscoelastic properties. This means “the
power of gluing insects,” Gaume explains, and of
forming watery filaments that cling to a struggling
bug.
Inspired by that research, David Armitage, a
graduate student at the University of California,
Berkeley, wondered whether some of the unusual
properties of a pitcher plant’s liquid might come
from the bacteria residing there.
He gathered water from six D. californica wells
and measured the liquid’s surface tension. It was
significantly lower than the surface tension of plain
water.
Then Armitage filtered the bacteria out of these
fluids and used them to create artificial pitcher plant
traps in the lab. He started with glass tubes and
added sterile water and small amounts of pitcher
bacteria, along with ground-up crickets to feed the
bacteria. The resulting fluids had similar surface
tension to the natural pitcher plant fluids. After
leaving the tubes alone for a month, Armitage
dropped ants into them.
No ants in plain water fell below the surface.
Ants in pitcher fluids, or artificial pitcher fluids,
mostly sank. But as Armitage made the artificial
pitcher fluids using smaller and smaller
concentrations of bacteria, the ants became more
likely to escape.
Gaume, who didn’t work on Armitage’s study,
says this convincingly shows that pitcher plant
bacteria help to keep prey from escaping. She notes
that the fluid of D. californica doesn’t have all the
sticky properties of the N. rafflesiana fluid she
studied, though; different pitcher plant species may
use different sets of tricks to hold onto their victims.
And, Gaume adds, it’s still possible that the plant
itself makes a liquid with low surface tension.
There are about 200 to 500 species of bacteria
present in pitcher plant fluid, says Armitage, who’s
now at the University of Notre Dame. “A few
common species seem to be members of groups
known to produce compounds that affect the surface
tension of their medium,” he says, but it will take
more research to figure out exactly which bacteria
make the water so dangerous.
“Alternatively,” Armitage adds, the low surface
tension could be simply a side effect of the bacteria
digesting bugs in the traps, “as fatty oils from the
insect corpses are released into the water column.”
Either way, the partnership between pitcher plants
and their resident bacteria seems to run deep.
Carnivorous plants don’t necessarily work alone, and
the cobra lily relies on microscopic partners for its
deadly bite.
Passage 4
This passage is adapted from the acceptance speech of Rigoberta Menchú Tum for the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. ©1992 by the Nobel Foundation. Menchú is a political activitst and member of the K’iche’, an indigenous people of Guatemala.
The Earth is the root and the source of our
culture. She keeps our memories, she receives our
ancestors and she, therefore, demands that we honor
her and return to her, with tenderness and respect,
those goods that she gives us. We have to take care of
her so that our children and grandchildren may
continue to benefit from her. If the world does not
learn now to show respect to nature, what kind of
future will the new generations have?
From these basic features [are derived] rights and
obligations in the American Continent, for the
indigenous people as well as for the non-indigenous,
whether they be racially mixed, blacks, whites or
Asian. The whole society has an obligation to show
mutual respect, to learn from each other and to share
material and scientific achievements. The indigenous
peoples never had, and still do not have, the place
that they should have occupied in the progress and
benefits of science and technology, although they
represented an important basis for this development.
If the indigenous civilization and the European
civilizations could have made exchanges in a peaceful
and harmonious manner, without destruction,
exploitation, discrimination and poverty, they could,
no doubt, have achieved greater and more valuable
conquests for Humanity.
Let us not forget that when the Europeans came to
America, there were flourishing and strong
civilizations there. One cannot talk about a
“discovery of America”, because one discovers that
which one does not know about, or that which is
hidden. But America and its native civilizations had
discovered themselves long before the fall of the
Roman Empire and Medieval Europe. The
significance of its cultures forms part of the heritage
of humanity and continues to astonish the learned.
I think it is necessary that the indigenous peoples,
of which I am a member, should contribute their
science and knowledge to human development,
because we have enormous potential and we could
combine our very ancient heritage with the
achievements of European civilization as well as with
civilizations in other parts of the world.
But this contribution, that to our understanding is
a recovery of the natural and cultural heritage, must
take place based on a rational and consensual basis in
respect of the right to make use of knowledge and
natural resources, with guarantees for equality
between Government and society.
We the indigenous are willing to combine
tradition with modernism, but not at any cost. . . .
At a time when the commemoration of the Fifth
Centenary of the arrival of Columbus in America has
repercussions all over the world, the revival of hope
for the oppressed indigenous peoples demands that
we reassert our existence to the world and the
value of our cultural identity. It demands that we
endeavor to actively participate in the decisions that
concern our destiny, in the building-up of our
countries/nations. Should we, in spite of all, not be
taken into consideration, there are factors that
guarantee our future: struggle and endurance;
courage; the decision to maintain our traditions that
have been exposed to so many perils and sufferings;
solidarity towards our struggle on the part of
numerous countries, governments, organizations and
citizens of the world.
That is why I dream of the day when the
relationship between the indigenous peoples and
other peoples is strengthened; when they can
combine their potentialities and their capabilities and
contribute to make life on this planet less unequal,
a better distribution of the scientific and cultural
treasures accumulated by Humanity, flourishing in
peace and justice.
Passage 5
Passage 1 is adapted from Kelly Dickerson, “Earth’s Magnetic Field Flip Could Happen Sooner Than Expected.” ©2014 by LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. Passage 2 is adapted from Ronald T. Merrill, Our Magnetic Earth: The Science of Geomagnetism. ©2010 by The University of Chicago.
Passage I
Earth’s magnetic field, which protects the planet
from huge blasts of solar radiation, has been
weakening over the past six months, according to
data collected by a European Space Agency (ESA)
satellite array called Swarm.
The biggest weak spots in the magnetic field—
which extends 370,000 miles (600,000 kilometers)
above the planet’s surface—have sprung up over the
Western Hemisphere, while the field has
strengthened over areas like the southern Indian
Ocean, according to the magnetometers onboard the
Swarm satellites—three separate satellites floating in
tandem.
The scientists who conducted the study are still
unsure why the magnetic field is weakening, but one
likely reason is that Earth’s magnetic poles are
getting ready to flip, said Rune Floberghagen, the
ESA’s Swarm mission manager. In fact, the data
suggest magnetic north is moving toward Siberia.
“Such a flip is not instantaneous, but would take
many hundred if not a few thousand years,”
Floberghagen told Live Science. “They have
happened many times in the past.”
Scientists already know that magnetic north shifts.
Once every few hundred thousand years the
magnetic poles flip so that a compass would point
south instead of north. While changes in magnetic
field strength are part of this normal flipping cycle,
data from Swarm have shown the field is starting to
weaken faster than in the past. Previously,
researchers estimated the field was weakening about
5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the
field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or
10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the
full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was
predicted, the new data suggest it could happen
sooner.
Passage II
Let’s consider the evidence a few twenty-first
-century scientists have given that we are in the initial
stages of a magnetic field reversal. The dipole field1 is
estimated to have decreased by 30 percent during the
past 2,000 years. This decrease has recently
accelerated, as evidenced by a 6 to 7 percent decrease
in the intensity of the dipole field during the past
century. It has been 780,000 years since the last
reversal, while the mean time between reversals for
the past 25 million years is around 250,000 years. We
are overdue for a reversal, or so the proponents
claim. These sound like compelling arguments, don’t
they? Why then do scientists like me urge caution?
Suppose you flipped a fair coin many times, and it
just happened to come up heads several times in a
row. What is the probability that the next time you
flip the coin it will come up heads? If it is a fair coin.
as assumed, the answer is 50 percent. The coin does
not know its past history. Although the statistical
analysis used is different when treating reversals
from that used in treating the multiple flips of a coin.
Earth’s magnetic field essentially also does not know
its past history. The present magnetic field does not
know what polarity it had 50,000 years ago, let alone
what it did 780,000 years ago. The conclusion that we
are overdue for a reversal does not imply that the
probability for a reversal has increased.
Earth’s magnetic field has exhibited many
variations in intensity. The recent intensity has been
either average or above average for the past million
years. Many times in the past, it has been
significantly lower and no reversals followed. For
example, it was about 40 percent lower than today’s
field 6,000 years ago.
Because the field is almost always increasing or
decreasing, the trick is to figure out some way lo tell
when any particular decrease might lead to a reversal.
Paleomagnetists are investigating various properties
of the nondipole field and possible relationships of it
to the dipole field to determine if they can reasonably
predict when the next reversal will come.
Unfortunately, we only poorly know the character of
the nondipole field preceding or during a magnetic
field reversal. Thus, no one has been able to
produce a viable method of predicting reversals. For
that matter, it is not clear that we can ever predict a
reversal much before it happens. It may be a little like
trying to forecast weather months in advance when
conditions of deterministic chaos apply.
Nevertheless, changes in Earth’s magnetic field,
including reversals, will almost certainly occur in the
future.
1 The portion of the magnetic field with opposing north and south
poles
2020年 12月 (亞洲/國際) SAT 考試閱讀題目
Ivy-Way 學生在上課的過程就會做到2020年12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！如果你想購買考題在家做，學生可以在Ivy-Way蝦皮商城、Ivy-Way臉書粉專、或 Line (ivyway) 直接購買喔！