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2021 4月 School Day SAT (美國/北美版) 考題回顧:所有 5 篇閱讀文章!

2021年4月SAT回顧

過去這一週末學生考了 2021 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 2021 年 4 月 School Day 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:

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 2021 年 4 月 (美國/北美) SAT 考試閱讀文章

Passage 1

This passage is adapted from The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies. ©2016 by Peter Ho Davies. The passage is set in 1935. Anna, an actress, is working with Newsreel, a photographer, to create a short documentary film. 

         Anna speaks Cantonese—with an American

accent, her father has always said—but no Mandarin

or Shanghainese. Now she requires an interpreter to

tell her hosts how delighted she is to visit her

homeland. It’s just as well the newsreel is silent, she

thinks, the announcer’s voice-over to be added later.

Besides, didn’t she do some of her best work in silent

pictures?

         Newsreel films her at Yu Gardens framed by a

I moon gate. He films her on the Nanking Road,

shopping and turning heads. In the Sincere

Department Store she is delighted to learn that the

onomatopoeic Chinese word for the pneumatic tube

system is pung. He films her on the Bund pointing

out junks1, rubbing the paw of the bronze lion

outside the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank for luck.

There are more cars than she expected—though she

must try a rickshaw—more telephones, more

streetlights. Overhead the telegraph lines make a net

I against the sky.

         A pair of trams cross in front of her, parting like

curtains. She marvels blithely at the modernity.

“Why, it reminds me of Berlin. I was expecting old

CathaylBut it looks nothing like Grauman’s

Theatre.” 
         Mostly, though, there are more Chinese than she

ever imagined—compradors in tang jackets, black-

and-white amahs, monks in their yellow robes—

crowding everywhere, more than she’s ever seen.

And this she keeps to herselfi secretly she feels like an

extra again, is glad of her chic Western wardrobe,

Chanel suits, for helping her stand out.

         The Mayfair Mannequin Academy of New York

named her the “World’s Best-Dressed Woman” in

1934. Not bad for a laundryman’s daughter, she wrote

to her father at the time, but he didn’t reply.

         She finds herself waiting for Newsreel to say

“Action!” Pausing at the edge of the frame, her

weight tipped forward, but catching herself. They

 laugh when she explains it to him. Yet she still wants

him to tell her what to do. “Was that good?” She asks

after a take, and he says, “Sure.” She feels naked

without stage makeup, lighting. She asks to redo a

moment when she bumps into someone. “If you

like.” She repeats a particular gesture, a little turn of

the wrist as if she’s presenting the scene around her,

practicing between takes and then repeating to make

sure he captures it, until he looks up and over the

camera and asks, “What are you doing?”

         Newsreel’s Eyemo camera runs for twenty

seconds, fully wound, and she begins pacing her

movements to his rhythms. From the taxi to the hotel

lobby, twenty seconds. Greeting a fan, twenty

seconds. Admiring a bolt of silk, twenty seconds. And

then it’s time to change the reel.

          She feels as if he’s winding her up like a tin toy.

         Finally, she leans on a rail overlooking the river,

waiting for him, and when he raises up, she lifts her

own Leica to take a picture of him.

           “You look like a tourist,” he tells her, and she

frowns. On the Whangpoo the sails of junks unfurl

like fans, raised as if in modesty to hide them from

gaze.

         She outfits herself with a new wardrobe. She sheds

her Western dresses and suits for sleek qipao. The

milky-eyed tailor who measures her wraps a knotted

string around her waist and hips. She used to work as

a seamstress at her father’s laundry when she was a

child, she says, and he nods when someone translates.

Afterward she shows off her new gowns for the

camera. “Going native,” she tells Newsreel. He

touches a finger to the knot of his bowtie as if it were

a button.

         She blends in better, at least until people address

her in Mandarin. She can’t recall the last time she felt

invisible like this. But she fears getting lost in the

crowd. She relies on Newsreel to pick her out, on the

camera to make her stand out.

          In later years she’ll wear those dresses in movies

and charge the studios an extra fee to rent her

wardrobe.

Flat bottomed boats 
Another term for China


Passage 2

This passage is adapted from Christian Jarrett, “We Have an Ingrained Anti-Profit Bias that Blinds Us to the Social Benefits of Free Markets.”©2017 by the British Psychological Society.

          According to a new paper in Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology, most of us have an instinctual

anti-profit bias. We view for-profit companies and

industries—upon which capitalism is based—with

inherent distrust, assuming that the more profitable

they are, the more harm they do to society. In fact,

research shows the opposite is true: companies that

make greater profits actually tend to contribute more

value to society, for example in terms of their

environmental responsibility and corporate

philanthropy.

          The authors of the new paper, led by Amit

Bhattacharjee at Erasmus University, believe this

anti-profit bias leads many voters and politicians to

endorse anti-profit policies that are likely to lead to

the very opposite outcomes for society that they want

to achieve. “Erroneous anti-profit beliefs may lead to

systematically worse economic policies for society,

even as they help people satisfy their social and

expressive needs on an individual level,” they said.

           Through seven separate studies involving

hundreds of online participants, the researchers

present evidence that the anti-profit bias arises

because we think about for-profit motives in a

somewhat superficial, ego-centric fashion. Because

the desire for profit is seen as based on selfish intent,

we extrapolate to assume that the activities of

for-profit companies and industries must be bad for

society, disregarding the reality that selfish intents

can have positive consequences.

          We also refer to our own mundane “zero sum”

experiences, such as buying a car, in which the seller’s

profitable gain inevitably comes at our loss. We fail to

consider how market forces operate on a massive

scale, in which for-profit companies (competing in a

free market with informed customers) need to

innovate, behave fairly and develop a good reputation

in order to be profitable over the long term.

          For instance, in the first study, participants rated

Fortune 500 companies in terms of how profitable

they thought they were and how much they thought

they engaged in bad business practices, such as

operating at the expense of others with no concern

for society. There was a clear pattern: the more 
profitable participants thought a company was, the

more they assumed that it engaged in bad business

practices. In fact, expert assessments of the firms

show the opposite pattern.

          In another study, participants were presented with

vignettes of different companies and either told they

operated for-profit or not-for-profit. Participants

rated the exact same companies, engaging in the

same business activities, as more likely to cause social

harm, and less likely to bring social benefit, if they

were described as for-profit rather than not-for-

profit.

          Bhattacharjee and his team found that they could

attenuate their participants’ anti-profit bias if they

prompted them to think about how a long-term

profit motive could encourage greater product

innovation and quality, better treatment of staff, and

more concern for reputation. However, thinking this

way doesn’t seem to come naturally. Participants’

baseline judgments about for-profit companies were

the same as when they were actively encouraged to

assume that customers face few choices and have no

information about firms’ reputations (which isn’t the

case in a free market, profit-driven economy).

          The findings of an ingrained anti-profit bias

 generally held regardless of participants’ economic

knowledge or political leanings. This was a US study

so it remains to be seen if the same anti-profit bias

will be found in other cultures.


Passage 3

This passage is adapted from Chris Brodie, “No Use Moving the Cheese.” ©2004 by Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society.

          Superman has super-hearing. Spider-Man has an

uncanny “spider-sense.” But truth can be stranger

than fiction. The newest superhero doesn’t wear a

cape or mask. It’s a mouse, and it looks just like its

normal brethren. Its super power is its amazing…

nose. In a paper published in Neuron, collaborators at

Florida State University and Yale University describe

what they call “super-smeller” mice. These

exceptional creatures have noses that are 1,000 to

10,000 times more sensitive than those of ordinary

mice.

          The superhero origin of these rodents involves the

deletion, or knockout, of a gene. This technique

usually generates mice that are quite sick, as nearly all

mutations are harmful. Yet it doesn’t seem to be true

for this gene, Kv1.3, which encodes a protein that acts

as a channel to let potassium ions (r) into cells. This

particular ion channel is found in immunological

T-cells and neurons in the hippocampus and the

olfactory bulb—the part of the brain that gets

information from odor receptors in the nose.

          In neurons, K+ channels such as Kv1.3 can act like

governors on an engine, restricting the firing rate of

the electrical spikes known as action potentials. The

deletion of Kv1.3 removes this block. Using mice

generated in the Yale lab of Richard Flavell, a team at

Florida State led by Debra Fadool discovered that the

loss of the channel caused one type of olfactory

neuron, the mitral cell, to fire at lower thresholds and

higher frequencies. Furthermore, the mutant cells

were insensitive to chemical messages that normally

rein in the flow of electrical current during an action

potential. According to coauthor Leonard

Kaczmarek, whose group at Yale studies the ion-

channel biology of sensation, these changes resulted

in greater excitability and better timing—effectively

“phase locking’ the output of the mitral cells, and

thereby increasing the coherence of olfactory signals.

          The mutation also caused structural changes in

the olfactory bulb. In this part of the brain, olfactory

receptor cells connect to mitral cells in clusters called

glomeruli. The knockout mice had glomeruli that

were about half as large—but twice as abundant—as

normal. As a result, information from the nose went

to twice as many “processing units” as usual. Fadool 

suggests this might increase the resolution of the

signal—meaning that a faint odor would be more

likely to be noticed above the jumble of background

smells.

         Mutant mice could distinguish between complex

odors, such as peppermint and powdered food, with

nearly 15 times the sensitivity of normal mice. They

were also better at detecting subtle molecular

differences between odorants, such as some (but not

all) closely related alcohols. The most amazing

change was a huge increase in sensitivity: Mutant

mice were able to perceive an odor that was 1,000

times more dilute than what wild-type mice could

smell.

           The super-smeller was definitely a surprise—none

of the investigators intended to create such a

creature. “We had no inkling,” states Kaczmarek.

“We were looking for an effect in the auditory

system.”


Passage 4

This passage Is adapted from a speech delivered in 1961 by Albert Luton, “Africa and Freedom.”©1960 by The Nobel Foundation. tutu!’ was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the struggle against apartheid, a system of Institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa from 1948 to 1991, the year It was abolished.

          In years gone by, some of the greatest men of our

century have stood here to receive this award, men

whose names and deeds have enriched the pages of

human history, men whom future generations will

regard as having shaped the world of our time. No

one could be left unmoved at being plucked from the

village of Groutville—a name many of you have

never heard before and which does not even feature

on many maps—to be plucked from banishment in a

rural backwater, to be lifted out of the narrow

confines of South Africa’s internal politics and placed

here in the shadow of these great figures….

           This award could not be for me alone, nor for just

South Africa, but for Africa as a whole. Africa

presently is most deeply torn with strife and most

bitterly stricken with racial conflict. How strange

then it is that a man of Africa should be here to

receive an award given for service to the cause of

peace and brotherhood between men. There has been

little peace in Africa in our time. From the

northernmost end of our continent, where war has

raged for seven years, to the center and to the south

there are battles being fought out, some with arms,

some without…. Ours is a continent in revolution

against oppression. And peace and revolution make

uneasy bedfellows. There can be no peace until the

forces of oppression are overthrown.

          Our continent has been carved up by the great

powers; alien governments have been forced upon

the African people by military conquest and by

economic domination; strivings for nationhood and

national dignity have been beaten down by force;

traditional economics and ancient customs have been

disrupted, and human skills and energy have been

harnessed for the advantage of our conquerors. In

these times there has been no peace; there could be

no brotherhood between men.

          But now, the revolutionary stirrings of our

continent are setting the past aside. Our people

everywhere from north to south of the continent are

reclaiming their land, their right to participate in

government, their dignity as men, their nationhood. 

Thus, in the turmoil of revolution, the basis for peace

and brotherhood in Africa is being restored by the

resurrection of national sovereignty and

independence, of equality and the dignity of man.

          It should not be difficult for you here in Europe to

appreciate this. Your continent passed through a

longer series of revolutionary upheavals, in which

your age of feudal backwardness gave way to the new

age of industrialization, true nationhood, democracy,

and rising living standards—the golden age for which

men have striven for generations. Your age of

revolution, stretching across all the years from the

eighteenth century to our own, encompassed some of

the bloodiest civil wars in all history. By comparison,

the African revolution has swept across three

quarters of the continent in less than a decade; its

final completion is within sight of our own

generation. Again, by comparison with Europe, our

African revolution—to our credit—is proving to be

orderly, quick, and comparatively bloodless….

          There is a paradox in the fact that Africa qualifies

for such an award in its age of turmoil and

revolution. How great is the paradox and how much

greater the honor that an award in support of peace

and the brotherhood of man should come to one who

is a citizen of a country where the brotherhood of

man is an illegal doctrine, outlawed, banned,

censured, proscribed and prohibited; where to work.

talk, or campaign for the realization in fact and deed

of the brotherhood of man is hazardous, punished

with banishment, or confinement without trial, or

imprisonment; where effective democratic channels

to peaceful settlement of the race problem have never

existed these 300 years; and where white minority

power rests on the most heavily armed and equipped

military machine in Africa. This is South Africa.

Even here, where white rule seems determined not

to change its mind for the better, the spirit of Africa’s

militant struggle for liberty, equality, and

independence asserts itself. I, together with

thousands of my countrymen, have in the course of

the struggle for these ideals been harassed and

imprisoned, but we are not deterred in our quest for

a new age in which we shall live in peace and in

brotherhood.


Passage 5

Passage 1 is adapted from Joseph Castro, “How the Mars Moon Phobos Got Its Grooves.” ©2014 by Purch. Passage 2 is adapted from Elizabeth Zublitslcy, “Mars’ Moon Phobos Is Sim Falling Apart.” Published In 2015 by National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 

Passage I

          Billions of years ago, Mars suffered from

numerous big impacts, and the resulting backwash

ultimately scarred the surface of Phobos, one of the

Red Planet’s two tiny moons, researchers say.

          In 1976, images from NASA’s Viking orbiter

revealed that the surface of Phobos is covered in

numerous parallel, channel-like grooves. Over the

years, researchers have come up with many

hypotheses to explain the odd features, but the origin

of the satellite’s grooves is still heavily debated today.

           In the new study, a pair of researchers reviewed

the evidence for the major hypotheses and concluded

that only one holds water: The grooves are chains of

secondary impacts, the landing sites of material

blasted to the Mars moon by impacts on the Red

Planet.

          Using new data and images from the European

Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, the scientists

also mapped the grooves in much greater detail than

ever before, and calculated that the amount of Mars

material needed to form all of Phobos’ grooves is

about two orders of magnitude lower than the total

ejecta from Mars’ craters.

           “Everything fits in with this hypothesis,” said John

Murray, a planetary scientist at Open University in

the U.K., and lead author of the new study. “We can

even trace the ejecta that produced the grooves back

to [source areas] on Mars.”

          Some scientists have previously speculated that

the grooves are fractures resulting from tidal forces,

the impact that created Phobos’ prominent Stickney

Crater or other sources.

          “It hasn’t really been a generally accepted idea, or

one that has gained universal approval,” Murray said,

adding that there are several issues with all fracture

hypotheses for the origin of the grooves. For instance,

the near-perfect alignment of the grooves within each

family doesn’t fit with other fracture fields

throughout the solar system. 

          Other hypotheses posit that the grooves on

Phobos are the result of local impacts. According to

one idea, the meteor that created Stickney Crater

kicked up ejecta that showered Phobos, creating the

grooves; a related hypothesis proposes that rolling

boulders from the crater scarred Phobos. Or, the

grooves may have developed when Phobos was

hammered by orbiting debris, according to some

researchers.

           But none of these ideas can explain all of the

so observed characteristics and patterns of the grooves,

Murray said.

Passage II

         Phobos’ grooves were long thought to be fractures

caused by the impact that formed Stickney crater.

That collision was so powerful, it came close to

shattering Phobos. However, scientists eventually

determined that the grooves don’t radiate outward

from the crater itself but from a focal point nearby.

           More recently, researchers have proposed that the

grooves may instead be produced by many smaller

impacts of material ejected from Mars. But new

modeling by NASA’s Terry Hurford and colleagues

supports the view that the grooves are more like

“stretch marks” that occur when Phobos gets

deformed by tidal forces.

          The gravitational pull between Mars and Phobos

produces these tidal forces. Earth and our moon pull

on each other in the same way, producing tides in the

oceans and making both planet and moon slightly

egg-shaped rather than perfectly round.

           The same explanation was proposed for the

grooves decades ago, after the Viking spacecraft sent

Images of Phobos to Earth. At the time, however,

Phobos was thought to be more-or-less solid all the

way through. When the tidal forces were calculated,

the stresses were too weak to fracture a solid moon of

that size.

          The recent thinking, however, is that the interior

of Phobos could be a rubble pile, barely holding

together, surrounded by a layer of powdery regolith

about 330 feet (100 meters) thick.

          An interior like this can distort easily because it

has very little strength and forces the outer layer to

readjust. The researchers think the outer layer of

Phobos behaves elastically and builds stress, but it’s

weak enough that these stresses can cause it to fail.

          All of this means the tidal forces acting on Phobos

can produce more than enough stress to fracture the

surface. Stress fractures predicted by this model line

up very well with the grooves seen in images of

Phobos. This explanation also fits with the

observation that some grooves are younger than

others, which would be the case if the process that

creates them is ongoing.


2021年 4月 (美國/北美) SAT 考試閱讀題目

Ivy-Way 學生在上課的過程就會做到2021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!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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