過去這個週末學生考了 2021 年 5 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！
我們整理了 2021 年 5 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 2021 年 5 月 (美國/北美) SAT 考試閱讀文章
Passage 1
This passage is adapted from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess. ©2016 by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. It is 1973, and Bela and Sanjay have recently moved to the United States. Bishu, Sanjay’s friend and mentor since childhood, helped arrange their move.
Bela was grateful to Bishu, she really was. But she
couldn’t help being annoyed that Bishu felt entitled
to drop in unannounced for dinner whenever he
wanted.
“Ah, good, solid Bengali food, Bela,” he would say
with an appreciative belch once he had finished
eating. “That fried fish was quite fine. But the
cauliflower curry could have done with a little more
coriander.” She resented him, too, for continuing to
advise Sanjay about his career, though Sanjay now
made more money than he did. She hated how, at
such times, Sanjay, though otherwise masterful (just
last week he had fought with a neighbor who had
parked in their spot, making him remove his car),
regressed into a teenagerish deference. Yes, Bishu-da,
you’re right, Bishu-da, I should be careful about what
I say to my supervisor.
This night, once he had caught his breath, Bishu
said, “We have some great news for you, Bela!”
Bela looked at her husband. Why, she asked in
wordless husband-wife code, didn’t you tell me this
great news? Why do I have to hear it from a stranger?
Bishu-da isn’t a stranger, he coded back with a
frown.
“You tell her, Shonu,” Bishu offered regally.
A boyish grin split open Sanjay’s face. “We’re
buying a house!”
The words swooshed around in Bela’s head like
wild birds. That was her secret dream: a house of her
own. She had lived in a house only once, in her
childhood, a magical sprawling place in Assam with
giant hydrangea bushes that leaned up against the
walls. Her father was still alive then; she remembered
walking with him in the mango grove, gathering
golden fruit from the ground. Was that why she
wanted a house so badly? She hadn’t told Sanjay
because it was an unreasonable longing, with her
earning only minimum wage, and loans, so many of
them.
“Bishu-da found us an excellent deal,” Sanjay said,
handing her a blurry photo. “Look!”
She thought the shingle-roofed tract home was
the most beautiful house she had seen. She traced,
with a shaky finger, the narrow front window, the
line of the roof, the wood fence. She imagined herself
cooking in a kitchen with new flooring and enough
shelves so her spices and dals didn’t have to be piled
in untidy heaps on the counter. She would sit with
Sanjay at the dining table drinking tea on a Sunday
morning, and look out at the backyard where she had
planted gardenias.
“We can’t afford it,” she said flatly, though she
couldn’t bear to hand the photo back to him.
“It isn’t to live in, silly.” Bishu was avuncular in
his kindness. “It’s an investment. We’re pooling our
savings for the down payment. We’ll rent it out. The
rent will cover the monthly mortgage. Property
values increase fast in the Bay Area. In a few years we
can sell it, or take out a second mortgage and buy
another home.”
All through dinner, the men discussed the things
they’d have to do: negotiate with the realtor, who was
known to Bishu, and bring down the price; get the
loan-thank goodness Bishu knew an agent, because
otherwise they wouldn’t qualify; advertise for a
tenant. The house needed new carpets; the rooms
had to be painted so they could charge more rent.
They could do the painting themselves, couldn’t they,
and save money? Their voices were excited and
self-assured and conspiratorial, the way they used to
be in India, when they were political leaders.
Immersed in her own plans, Bela heard only
snippets. As she carried dishes back and forth from
the kitchen, she glanced at the photo, which she had
propped up on the counter, and which she would
paste, afterward, into the album where she was
accumulating-slowly, because film was expensive-
Polaroids of their American life. She had seen an
announcement at Lucky’s a couple days back. They
needed shelf stockers. She could get on a late shift,
after her stint at Tiny Treasures. Save the entire
amount. When she had enough, she would hand it
triumphantly to Sanjay and insist that he buy out
Bishu. Finally, then, she would have a house of her
own.
Passage 2
This passage is adapted from Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum. Originally published in 1891.
[I]t has come to pass that working men have
been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the
hardheartedness of employers and the greed of
unchecked competition. The mischief has been
increased by rapacious usury,1 which, although more
than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless,
under a different guise, but with like injustice, still
practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this
must be added that the hiring of labor and the
conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of
comparatively few; so that a small number of very
rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming
masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than
that of slavery itself.
To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working
on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving
to do away with private property, and contend
that individual possessions should become the
common property of all, to be administered by the
State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus
transferring property from private individuals to the
community, the present mischievous state of things
will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will
then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy.
But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end
the controversy that were they carried into effect the
working man himself would be among the first to
suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for
they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the
functions of the State, and create utter confusion in
the community.
It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages
in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and
motive of his work is to obtain property, and
thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man
hires out to another his strength or skill, he does
so for the purpose of receiving in return what is
necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he
therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full
and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to
the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases.
Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for
greater security, invests his savings in land, the land,
in such case, is only his wages under another form;
and, consequently, a working man’s little estate thus
purchased should be as completely at his full disposal
as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is
precisely in such power of disposal that ownership
obtains, whether the property consist ofl and or
chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to
transfer the possessions of individuals to the
community at large, strike at the interests of every
wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the
liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all
hope and possibility of increasing his resources and
of bettering his condition in life.
What is of far greater moment, however, is the
fact that the remedy they propose is manifestly
against justice. For, every man has by nature the
right to possess property as his own. This is one of
the chief points of distinction between man and the
animal creation, for the brute has no power of self
direction Itis the mind, or reason, which
is the predominant element in us who are human
creatures; it is this which renders a human being
human, and distinguishes him essentially from the
brute. And on this very account-that man
alone among the animal creation is endowed with
reason-it must be within his right to possess things
10 not merely for temporary and momentary use, as
other living things do, but to have and to hold them
in stable and permanent possession; he must have
not only things that perish in the use, but those also
which, though they have been reduced into use,
continue for further use in after time.
1 The lending of money at an excessively high interest rate
Passage 3
This passage is adapted from Matthew Savoca, “The Oceans Are Full of Plastic, but Why Do Seabirds Eat It?” ©2016 by The Conversation US, Inc.
Pioneering research by Dr. Thomas Grubb Jr. in
the early 1970s showed that tube-nosed seabirds use
their powerful sense of smell, or olfaction, to find
food effectively, even when heavy fog obscures their
vision. Two decades later, Dr. Gabrielle Nevitt and
colleagues found that certain species of tube-nosed
seabirds are attracted to dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a
natural scented sulfur compound. DMS comes from
marine algae, which produce a related chemical
called DMSP inside their cells. When those cells are
damaged—for example, when algae die, or when
marine grazers like krill eat it—DMSP breaks down,
producing DMS. The smell of DMS alerts seabirds
that food is nearby—not the algae, but the krill that
are consuming the algae.
Dr. Nevitt and I wondered whether these seabirds
were being tricked into consuming marine plastic
debris because of the way it smelled. To test this idea,
my coauthors and I created a database collecting
every study we could find that recorded plastic
ingestion by tube-nosed seabirds over the past
50 years. This database contained information from
over 20,000 birds of more than 70 species. It showed
that species of birds that use DMS as a foraging cue
eat plastic nearly six times as frequently as species
that are not attracted to the smell of DMS while
foraging.
To further test our theory, we needed to analyze
how marine plastic debris smells. To do so, I took
beads of the three most common types of floating
plastic—polypropylene and low- and high-density
polyethylene—and sewed them inside custom mesh
bags, which we attached to two buoys off of
California’s central coast. We hypothesized that algae
would coat the plastic at sea, a process known as
biofouling, and produce DMS.
After the plastic had been immersed for about a
month at sea, I retrieved it and brought it to a lab
that is not usually a stop for marine scientists: the
Robert Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science
at UC Davis. There we used a gas chromatograph,
specifically built to detect sulfur odors in food
products, to measure the chemical signature of our
experimental marine debris. Sulfur compounds have
a very distinct odor; to humans they smell like rotten
eggs or decaying seaweed on the beach, but to some
species of seabirds DMS smells delicious!
Sure enough, every sample of plastic we collected
was coated with algae and had substantial amounts of
DMS associated with it. We found levels of DMS that
were higher than normal background concentrations
in the environment, and well above levels that
tube-nosed seabirds can detect and use to find food.
These results provide the first evidence that, in
addition to looking like food, plastic debris may also
confuse seabirds that hunt by smell.
Our findings have important implications. First,
they suggest that plastic debris may be a more
insidious threat to marine life than we previously
believed. If plastic looks and smells like food, it is
more likely to be mistaken for prey than if it just
looks like food.
Second. we found through data analysis that
small, secretive burrow-nesting seabirds, such as
prions, storm petrels, and shearwaters, are more
likely to confuse plastic for food than their more
charismatic, surface-nesting relatives such as
albatrosses. This difference matters because
populations of hard-to-observe burrow-nesting
seabirds are more difficult to count than surface-
nesting species, so they often are not surveyed as
closely. Therefore, we recommend increased
monitoring of these less charismatic species that may
be at greater risk of plastic ingestion.
Passage 4
This passage is adapted from David Rotman, “It Pays to Be Smart.” ©2017 by MIT Technology Review.
Our economy is increasingly ruled by a few
dominant firms. We see them everywhere, from
established giants Amazon. Facebook, Google, Apple,
and Walmart to fast-growing newcomers like
Airbnb. Tesla, and Uber. There have always been
large companies and outright monopolies, but there’s
something distinctive about this new generation of
what some economists call superstar companies.
They appear across a broad range of business sectors
and have gained their power at least in part by
adeptly anticipating and using digital technologies
that foster conditions where a few winners essentially
take all.
According to recent research by economists at
Harvard and MIT. the share of sales by superstar
companies—which the authors define as the four
largest firms in a given industry—has gone up
sharply in all the sectors they looked at, from
transportation to services to finance. The trend
toward superstar firms is accelerating, says Lawrence
Katz, a Harvard economist and coauthor of the
study. It has become more uniform across industries
and developed economies during the past decade or
so. These companies’ dominance is particularly
strong in markets undergoing rapid technological
change. Katz says that’s probably because of the wide
disparity in how well companies take advantage of
new advances. In other words, you have to be the
smartest company in your field or you might as well
not bother.
In itself, that might not be bad. But the authors
identified a deeply troubling result of an economy
where just a few top-tier companies dominate.
One of the economic truths of much of the 20th
century was that the portion of the country’s overall
income that went to labor was constant; as the
economy grew, workers got a proportionate share of
that growing pie. But labor’s share of the national
income has been shrinking over the past few decades.
This is true in many countries, and the decline
speeded up in the United States in the 2000s.
The trend puzzles economists. Some suggest it
reflects the rise of cheap robots that can do the jobs
of human workers, but the data isn’t convincing.
Instead, Katz and his coauthors blame the emergence
of the superstar companies. As these companies grow
and become more efficient and more adept at using
digital technologies, they need fewer workers relative
to their soaring revenues. The fact that these labor-
frugal firms have so much of the market share in
their sectors means labor gets a smaller portion of
the nation’s overall income.
The rise of the superstar companies also might
help explain another disturbing economic trend.
Despite the proliferation of impressive new advances
in software, digital devices, and artificial intelligence
over the last decade and the great profits generated
by Silicon Valley, economic growth in the United
States and other developed countries has been
sluggish. In particular, an economic measure called
total factor productivity1 which is meant to reflect
innovation, has been dismal. How can overall growth
be so lackluster while the high-tech sector is
booming?
Economists with the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) think they
have found the answer. It turns out that productivity
at the top companies in various sectors—what the
OECD economists call the frontier firms—is growing
robustly. These are the companies making the best
use of the Internet, software, and other technologies
to streamline their operations and create new market
opportunities. But most companies aren’t actually
harnessing new technologies very effectively. And the
relatively poor productivity of these laggards, says
Australian OECD economist Dan Andrews, is
dragging down the overall economy.
Passage 5
Passage 1 is adapted from Morten E. Allentoft, “Recovering Samples for Ancient DNA Research-Guidelines for the Field Archaeologist.” ©2013 by Antiquity Publications Ltd. Passage 2 is adapted from Sam Kean, “Ancient DNA.” ©2015 by Chemical Heritage Foundation.
Passage I
Working with ancient and degraded DNA is not
without challenges. Most serious perhaps is the risk
of contamination with contemporary DNA, which
can easily “swamp” the small amount of authentic
DNA in an ancient sample. This fact became
painfully clear in the earlier years of ancient DNA
research, when a number of high profile publications
seemingly presented evidence of DNA from samples
of extreme age—including 80-million-year-old
dinosaur bones and greater than 120-million-
year-old insects. We are now aware that these results
reflected modern contaminants, in part because the
rate of post mortem fragmentation of DNA excludes
the existence of DNA that old. In response to these
claims, a set of ancient DNA “rules” was established
to minimise the risk of contamination and to provide
some means for downstream authentication of the
results and, since then, numerous studies have
identified and assessed contamination problems in
ancient samples.
In essence, however, most of these rules
represent “symptomatic treatment.” If a sample is
contaminated with modern DNA before entering the
laboratory, for example during excavation, it can be
difficult to remove the contamination, and it can be
impossible to distinguish between authentic ancient
DNA and contaminants. This latter problem is
particularly pertinent if the target DNA and the
contaminant DNA are from the same species, as is
often the case when research is conducted on ancient
human material.
In the era of high-throughput sequencing,
statistical tools based on DNA damage signatures are
now available to assess the overall authenticity of
“bulk” ancient DNA data. Considerable time and
resources, however, are expended before the
contamination can be identified, and if a sample has
been contaminated decades or centuries ago it may
result in contaminant DNA that displays degradation
damage patterns similar to that of true ancient DNA.
Although strict laboratory exercises are often
combined with bioinformatic analyses to respectively
remove and identify DNA contamination, it would
be extremely beneficial if the risk of contamination
could be lowered in the first place.
Passage II
Studying ancient DNA (aDNA) is a lot like
playing Whac-A-Mole: stamp out one problem
and another will pop up and take its place.
Contamination, corruption, chromosomal
shredding—it’s a miracle scientists can even find
aDNA in specimens, much less glean information
from it. But a few recent breakthroughs have greatly
expanded our ability to read aDNA and have already
opened whole new vistas of evolution.
DNA disappears after cells die for a few reasons.
All healthy cells have enzymes that shred DNA to
recycle it, and unfortunately those enzymes keep
right on shredding after death. Water and oxygen in
the environment also react with DNA’s backbone
and degrade it further. I’d say these processes reduce
DNA to confetti, but that doesn’t do justice to just
how thorough the destruction is. It’s more like
confetti making its own even tinier confetti, which in
turn makes its own confetti. After a few thousand
years a multibillion-base-pair genome might be
reduced to scraps a few dozen letters long—a
100-million-fold reduction.
The best aDNA comes from samples unearthed in
tundras or caves. Recent advances in computing
power have also allowed scientists to assemble
sequences from even minute scraps of DNA.
The oldest recovered genome so far came from a
horse’s leg bone buried in Canada’s Yukon Territory
for 700,000 years; with the right sample and
ever-better software to analyze it, scientists think
they can push that back to one million years.
Finding the right sample solves only one problem,
though. In most ancient tissues 99% of the DNA
present comes from contamination by invading fungi
and bacteria. So scientists have to deploy chemical
snares, like “RNA bait.” If searching for human
DNA, researchers would prepare the bait by
manufacturing millions of strips of human RNA
(DNA’s chemical cousin), albeit with one
modification: these RNA strips have chemical Velcro
attached to one end. When mixed into a sample, this
RNA gloms onto the human DNA and only the
human DNA. Scientists then pour in tiny metallic
beads that—here’s the key—also have chemical
Velcro attached, locking the beads and the
RNA/DNA strips together. Finally, a magnet holds
onto the beads as the un-Velcroed microbial DNA
washes away, leaving behind pristine samples.
While this technique is expensive—developing the
RNA bait can cost $300,000—new methods promise
to drop that price to roughly $50.
2021 年 5 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 5 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！
