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2020年經過多次SAT考試取消的情況，雖然這次還是有多達178,600位學生的八月SAT被迫取消，但很多學生終於在過去這週末第一次考到SAT啦！
這裡，我們整理了 2020 年 8 月 SAT 亞洲/國際考試當中的 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。
PASSAGE 1
This passage is adapted from Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Reputations. ©2013 by Juan Gabriel Vasquez. Translation by Anne McLean. 02016 by Anne McLean. The novel’s main character, Javier Mallarino, is a political cartoonist who works for a newspaper in Bogota, the capital city of Colombia.
It took just an instant to spot three people reading the paper, his paper, and he thought that all three would soon pass or had already passed their eyes over the letters of his name in print and then his signature, that clear uppercase letter that soon deteriorated into a chaos of curves and ended up disintegrating into a corner. Everyone knew the space where his cartoon had always been: in the very centre of the first page of opinion columns, that mythic place where Colombians go to hate their public figures or find out why they love them. It was the first thing anyone’s eyes saw when they reached those pages. The black square, the slender strokes, the line of text or brief dialogue beneath the frame: the scene that left his desk each day and was praised, admired, commented on, misinterpreted, repudiated in a column of the same newspaper or another, in the irate letter of an irate reader, in a debate on some morning radio show. Yes, it was a terrible power. There was a time when Mallarino desired it more than anything else in the world; he worked hard to get it; he enjoyed it and exploited it conscientiously. And now that he was sixty-five, the very political class he’d so attacked and hounded and scorned from his redoubt, mocked without consideration or respect for the ties of family or friendship (and he’d lost quite a few friends as a result, and even a few relatives), that very same political class had decided to put the gigantic Colombian machinery of sycophancy into action to create a public homage, which for the first time in history, and perhaps for the last, would celebrate a cartoonist. “This is not going to happen again,” Rodrigo Valencia, publisher of the newspaper for the last three decades, said to him, when he called, diligent messenger, to tell him about the official visit he’d just received, the accolades he’d just heard, the intentions the organizers had just revealed. “It’s an offer that’s not going to be repeated. It would be silly to turn it down.”
“Who said I was going to turn it down?” asked Mallarino.
“Nobody,” said Valencia. “Well, I did. Because I know you, Javier. And so do they, truth be told. If not, why would they come here and ask me first?”
“Oh, I see. You’re the negotiator. You’re the one who’ll convince me.”
“More or legs,” said Valencia. His voice was guttural and deep, one of those voices that give orders naturally, or whose demands are accepted without a fuss. He knew it; he’d grown accustomed to choosing the words that best suited his voice. “They want to hold it in the Teatro Colon, Javier, imagine that. Don’t let the chance slip by, don’t be an idiot. Not for you, don’t get me wrong, you don’t matter to me. For the newspaper.”
Mallarino let out a snort of annoyance. “Well, let me think about it,” he said.
“For the newspaper,” said Valencia.
“Call me tomorrow and we’ll talk,” said Mallarino. And then: “Would it be upstairs in the sala Foyer?”
“No, Javier, this is what I’m trying to tell you. They’re going to have it on the main stage.”
“On the main stage?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, man. This thing’s serious.”
They confirmed it later—Teatro Colon, main stage, the thing was serious—and the place seemed only appropriate: there, under the fresco of the six muses, behind the curtain where Ruy Blas and Romeo and Othello and Juliet shared the same enchanted space, on the same stage where he’d witnessed so many beautiful artifices since he was a boy, from Marcel Marceau to Life is a Dream, he was now getting ready to play an artifice of his own creation: the favoured son, the honoured citizen, the illustrious compatriot with lapels wide enough to hold as many medals as necessary. That’s why he’d turned down the transport the Ministry had offered to put at his disposal. No, this afternoon Mallarino had come down to the city in his old car and left it in a car park at Fifth and Nineteenth: he wanted to arrive on foot to his own apotheosis, approach like everybody else, appear suddenly at a corner and feel that his mere presence might send a tremor through the air, spark conversations, make heads turn; he wanted to announce, with this single gesture, that he hadn’t lost a speck of his old independence.
Passage 2
This passage is adapted from “You’re Less Persuasive Than You Think over Email.” ©2016 by Association for Psychological Science.
You just got assigned a new project at work and you need to wrangle some help from the rest of your team. While it may be tempting to send out a mass email asking for volunteers, new research suggests you’re much more likely to enlist help by actually asking people face-to-face.
Across two experiments, psychological scientists M. Mandi Roghanizad (University of Waterloo) and Vanessa Bohns (Cornell University) found that people tend to overestimate the persuasiveness of requests sent over email, while also underestimating the effectiveness of requests made in person.
“Overall, we find people are less influential than they think over email,” Roghanizad and Bohns write.
Across several previous studies, Bohns has found that people consistently underestimate—by a large margin—their powers of persuasion. Across 12 experiments, Bohns and colleagues have asked study participants to make requests of more than 14,000 strangers: Whether it’s asking to borrow a cell phone or soliciting a charitable donation, people misjudge the likelihood that strangers will say “yes” to a request.
Why? We’re so focused on our own feelings of discomfort when asking for a favor that we don’t adequately account for the feelings of the person being asked.
“Targets feel awkward and uncomfortable saying `no,’ both because of what it might insinuate about the requester, and because it feels bad to let someone down,” Roghanizad and Bohns explain.
In the first experiment, 45 college students were each assigned to ask 10 strangers to fill out a short personality survey. Half of the requesters were assigned to a face-to-face condition, approaching 10 unknown students on a college campus, while the other requesters sent emails to strangers chosen out of the university’s directory. In both conditions, requesters used the same script to make the request. Before they got started, requesters were asked how many people they thought they could get to fill out the survey.
The results confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis: Those in the face-to-face condition underestimated their persuasive powers while thost in the email condition overestimated their success rate. Both groups of requesters thought they could get around 5 people out of 10 to take the survey. While email requesters convinced around 10% of people to comply with their request, face-to-face requests from a total stranger resulted in around a 70% success rate.
In a second study, 60 requesters were again randomly assigned to face-to-face or email conditions. This time, requesters approached strangers who had already agreed to complete a questionnaire for $1. Their task was to convince the strangers to complete an additional proofreading task for free. Again, before making their requests, participants were asked how many people out of 7 they thought would agree to taking on the second freebie task.
Targets, who had already agreed to complete the paid questionnaire, were asked whether they would be willing to complete the unpaid task. The paid questionnaire was made up of questions about why targets had said yes or no to completing the second task.
Again, requesters in both groups predicted the same success rates, but those in the face-to-face condition met with far more success. One reason that face-to-face requests are so much more effective is that people feel more awkward and uncomfortable saying no in person.
Roghanizad and Bohns also found a significant interaction with trust and empathy between the two conditions; targets empathized with and trusted requesters more in the face-to-face condition compared to the email condition, although requesters predicted no difference between a brief face-to-face encounter and an email.
Passage 3
This passage is adapted from Lee Alan Dugatkin, Principles of Animal Behavior. (c) 2009 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Mammals and birds tend to become better parents as they produce more and more offspring. Direct experience as a parent, however, is only one way to learn how to become a successful mother or father. Developmental factors early in life can also potentially affect future parental behavior. For example, in many species of birds and mammals, some individuals remain in their natal group, even after they themselves are capable of reproduction, and they often help their parents raise additional broods of offspring (that is, the younger siblings of the helpers). Is it possible that such developmental experience may affect subsequent parenting success in helpers who eventually leave their natal territory? Susan Margulis and her colleagues examined this possibility in oldfield mice (Peromyscus polionotus).
Data on helping behavior among oldfield mice in natural settings are extremely difficult to gather, but a significant body of indirect evidence suggests that some females remain at the nest and help their mothers raise the next clutch of young. For example, natural history data suggest that a mother can be both pregnant and nursing a brood of mice, while an older brood still remains at the nest, providing ample opportunity for potential helpers to aid in rearing their younger siblings (Foltz, 1981). Margulis tested whether “experienced” females—that is, females that remained at their parents’ nest during the rearing of a litter of their younger siblings—were subsequently better mothers to their own offspring than “inexperienced” females who did not remain at the nest while younger broods of siblings were being reared. Thus, they examined whether a developmental trajectory involving helping one’s mother affected the helper’s own parenting behavior.
In order to avoid cause-and-effect problems (in interpreting the data), Margulis and her colleagues experimentally created inexperienced and experienced females by removing (or not removing) females from their natal nests. They began their work using a large colony of mice housed at the Brookfield (Illinois) Zoo, and they used mice that were ten to fifteen generations removed from wild-caught individuals. Margulis and her team formed a series of male-female pairs. Quickly thereafter, mating occurred, and pups were born. In the “inexperienced female” (IF) treatment, IF females were removed from the nest at twenty days of age and they were raised in all-female groups until the experiment began. In the “experienced female” (EF) treatment, when EF females were twenty days old they were not removed from the nest but rather remained at the nest with their pregnant mother until she gave birth again and weaned a second brood. At that point, EF females were removed from the nest and reared in an all-female group until the experiment began.
At the start of the experiment, IF and EF females were paired with inexperienced males, with whom they mated and produced offspring, and the females’ parental activities and offspring survival were recorded. Results suggest that all females—both EF and IF—became better parents as they produced more and more broods over time, but the key comparison was between inexperienced and experienced females at any given point in time. Here, Margulis and her colleagues found that the broods of experienced females survived with a higher probability than those of inexperienced females, in part due to the superior nest-building behavior displayed by experienced females. The results indicate that the developmental experience of being present when one’s mother raises a subsequent clutch of offspring has long-term consequences for parenting abilities.
Passage 4
This passage is adapted from a speech delivered in 1836 by James Forten, “An Address Delivered before the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia.” Forten, a prominent African American abolitionist, gave this speech after the slave state of South Carolina officially requested that Northern free states suppress antislavery organizations and forbid the publication of antislavery literature.
There never was a request more unreasonable, more abominable—evincing in its tone the greatest. insult that could be offered to a free and independent people. But what do the majority of the citizens in the North about the matter? Why, I regret to have it in my power to say, that, with few exceptions, they are yielding to this daring presumption of the South; tamely acquiescing without venturing even as much as a word in reply. They ask of them to relinquish the sacred and legitimate right to think and act as they please. Freemen are, in one sense, threatened with slavery; the chains are shaken in their faces, and yet they appear unwilling to resist them as becomes freemen. Such votaries are they at the shrine of mammon’ that they have not courage enough to join the standard of patriotism which their fathers reared, and with the dignity of a free and unshackled people, repel with scorn, this unheard of infringement upon their dearest rights—this death-blow to their own liberties. My friends, do you ask why I thus speak? It is because I love America; it is my native land; because I feel as one should feel who sees destruction, like a corroding cancer, eating into the very heart of his country, and would make one struggle to save her;—because I love the stars and stripes, emblems of our National Flag—and long to see the day when not a slave shall be found resting under its shadow; when it shall play with the winds pure and unstained by the blood of “captive millions.”
The South most earnestly and respectfully solicits the North to let the question of Slavery alone, and leave it to their bountiful honesty and humanity to settle. Why, honesty, I fear, has fled from the South, long ago; sincerity has fallen asleep there; pity has hidden herself; justice cannot find the way; helper is not at home; charity lies dangerously ill; benevolence is under arrest; faith is nearly extinguished; truth has long since been buried, and conscience is nailed on the wall. Now, do you think it would be better to leave it to the bountiful honesty and humanity of the South to settle? No, no. Only yield to them in this one particular and they will find you vulnerable in every other. I can tell you, my hearers, if the North once sinks into profound silence on this momentous subject, you may then bid farewell to peace, order and reform; then the condition of your fellow creatures in the southern section of our country will never be ameliorated. . . .
Cease not to do as you are now doing, notwithstanding the invidious frowns that may be cast upon your efforts; regard not these—for bear in mind that the future prosperity of the nation rests upon the successful labours of the Abolitionists; this is as certain as that there is a God above. Recollect you have this distinction—you have brought down upon your heads the anger of many foes for that good which you seek to do your country; you are insulted and sneered at because you feel for the proscribed, the defenceless, the down-trodden; you are despised because you would raise them in the scale of beings; you are charged as coming out to the world with the Bible in one hand and a firebrand in the other. May you never be ashamed of that firebrand. It is a holy fire, kindled from every page of that sacred chronicle.
You are called fanatics. Well, what if you are? Ought you to shrink from this name? God forbid. There is an eloquence in such fanaticism, for it whispers hope to the slave; there is sanctity in it, for it contains the consecrated spirit of religion; it is the fanaticism of a Benezet, a Rush, a Franklin, a Jay;2 the same that animated and inspired the heart of the writer of the Declaration of Independence. Then flinch not from your high duty; continue to warn the South of the awful volcano they are recklessly sleeping over.
Passage 5
Passage 1 is adapted from Judith Hooper, Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale. ©2002 by Judith Hooper. Passage 2 is adapted from Judy Diamond and Alan B. Bond, Concealing Coloration in Animals. ©2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Based on an experiment he conducted in 1953, Bernard Kettlewell concluded that dark coloring spread through peppered moth populations in industrial areas because it made moths less.conspicuous to birds when moths were resting on tree trunks darkened by pollution, a phenomenon called industrial melanism.
Passage 1
By the early 1990s, if not before, it was known to a small circle of scientists that what every textbook said about industrial melanism was untrue. There were some fundamental discrepancies, not least that birds may not be the major predators. The question is not whether a bird can be trained to eat a moth off a tree trunk—birds are known to be highly educable and those in Kettlewell’s aviary experiment in 1953 were “quick to learn” from experience—but whether in nature birds are major predators of peppered moths.
Equally damaging to the “authorized version” was the fact that moths do not normally rest on tree trunks. It is now universally acknowledged that the scientist Cyril Clarke, who laconically observed that in twenty-five years he had seen exactly two peppered moths resting on tree trunks, was right after all: the normal daytime resting place of peppered moths is not on tree trunks but in shaded areas under branches, where colour differences would be muted.
Additionally, the experimental densities were too high. In nature peppered moths are known to be very scantily distributed, but Kettlewell set out at least four moths per tree, and then replaced them as soon as all of one type were eaten. Everyone now concedes that these densities were unnatural. Kettlewell was, in effect, creating a feeding tray, and the “intensity of predation” recorded in his experiments simply reflected a learned response by the local birds.
Furthermore, the method of release was faulty. Peppered moths fly at night and settle into their daytime resting places at dawn. Kettlewell released his moths in daylight because if he had released them at night they would have made a beeline for the light traps. One morning he tried releasing them just around dawn, but this proved too laborious; they were so cold he had to warm them up over his car engine to get them going.
Passage 2
Many of the concerns of scientists regarding the Kettlewell conclusions were addressed in a careful replication of his research conducted by Michael Majerus, a professor of genetics at Cambridge University. Majerus collected peppered moths from woodlands to the west of Cambridge between 2001 and 2007, when the woods were recovering from coal smoke pollution. During the six years of his study, he found that the frequency of the dark form in these woodlands declined from 12 percent to just over 1 percent. The dark moths were essentially disappearing altogether. The question Majerus asked was whether this decrease could be attributed to bird predation. He captured local peppered moths and raised others in the laboratory. All the moths were released in an experimental plot near Madingley Wood. Improving on Kettlewell’s technique, Majerus released low densities of the moths, and the numbers of light and dark forms were close to their natural abundance. The moths were released on different parts of trees, in roughly the proportions that they used those locations in the wild. Although both lab-raised and wild-caught moths were used, their data were recorded and analyzed separately. Most importantly, the moths were released into large cages on the trees—one moth per cage—at sunset. The cages were removed forty minutes before sunrise the following morning, and each moth was watched for a subsequent four-hour period, recording all incidents of predation by birds.
Significantly more dark peppered moths than light ones were eaten by birds in the Cambridge forest. The birds’ bias toward dark moths, moreover, was a very close match to the overall decrease in dark moths in the population. Majerus had carefully addressed each criticism of Kettlewell’s design and had found that the change in numbers of light and dark moths in a single forest over six years could be fully accounted for by bird predation. Kettlewell’s results had shown that the coloration of the peppered moth was the product of natural selection. Majerus had confirmed that the primary agency of selection was, in fact, visual predation by insect-eating birds, producing rapid evolution of color forms in synchrony with local environmental change.
2020 年 8 月 (亞洲/國際) SAT 考試閱讀題目
今年College Board因為疫情對2020年SAT考試日期做了重大調整，Ivy-Way 也針對這些考試日期在秋季加開線上及台北兩種週末SAT模考班，學生在上課的過程會做到2020年8月以及其他月份的官方歷年考題。做完題目與老師立刻討論是在學完考試概念之後必做的練習，學生可以趕快報名！
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！
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