基于考生回忆投稿及材料收集整理 — 非官方 IELTS 资料。
Reading Passage 1: Socotra Island
Situated in the Arabian Sea off the Arabian Peninsula is the Socotra archipelago, a remnant of an ancient landmass that became separated from Africa and Arabia 18 million years ago. When scientists began the first substantial exploration of the islands 30 years ago, they found a fascinating collection of unusual plants and animals—a unique combination of 'relict' populations (organisms that have become extinct elsewhere) and species that have evolved to cope with the island's harsh conditions. In fact, almost a third of its plant species and up to 80 percent of its terrestrial animals are found nowhere else.
Life in the arid conditions is harsh for the people living there too. Isolated from the mainland by hundreds of kilometres, and with monsoons that rage for several months every year, the islanders were historically self-sufficient—relying only on what they themselves could produce to survive. There are floods and droughts, and many islanders lack adequate water resources and nutrition. Medical care and education are limited.
However, the main island, Socotra, is experiencing significant change. A rapid development programme has been instituted that will have far-reaching impacts on the island's people and the environment for decades to come. In the past, the only way to get to Socotra was by travelling for several days on a boat, but irregular flights began touching down on dirt landing strips during the late 1960s. By 1999, a runway had been constructed on Socotra that was capable of taking larger aircraft all year round, and since 2000 the capital, Hadibo, has seen huge expansion. New schools have been built, and a modern terminal was added to the airport, through which an increasing number of tourists are beginning to pass. And there are plans to construct new harbour facilities that will enable fishermen to sell their catch more easily, and also make it simpler for local people to have food, and bricks and timber for construction projects brought to the island.
However, although these improvements are significant, it’s the continuing development of Socotra’s road system that is having the greatest impact on the islanders. Until 1991, a few dirt tracks, navigable only by four-wheel drive, gave access to part of the island. Otherwise it was only possible to reach most areas on foot, or with a donkey. By 2001, however, there was an extensive network of unpaved car tracks, and the following year a tarmac road, the first of its kind on Socotra, connecting the airport to Hadibo, was completed. Now, a road traverses the Diksam plateau and continues on to the south coast, making essential services more accessible to a large number of villagers.
There is no doubt that the development of Socotra’s infrastructure has brought many benefits to the island's inhabitants, but there is growing concern that the speed with which it is taking place is so rapid that it will be difficult for local people to maintain certain traditions. There is also the fear that the developments will threaten the island's unique ecosystems. Building new roads and harbours may lead to the introduction of alien species to Socotra Island (as has already happened with the Indian house crow), damage to the sea's biodiversity through the increased collection and sale of coral, and tourist developments on an inappropriate and unsustainable scale.
Problems were also caused by increasing access to sensitive areas. For example, cutting the road along the coast caused considerable damage to the stunning scenery. However, some steps were then taken to limit the damage caused by further development. For example, biodiversity project officers were consulted in the planning stages of the road that crosses the centre of Socotra, so it avoids some of the most scenic areas and sites that contain plants only found in a limited number of locations. It is an area which is also home to the greatest concentrations of dragon's blood trees and supports many endemic animals.
An agreement has now been reached about all future construction of roads. To protect the island's ecologically sensitive areas, any proposed road will be subject to a report assessing its environmental impact prior to construction. The challenge has been to bring the benefits of development to Socotra without damaging the environment, which supports the people's way of life and will form the basis of future development on the island.
- 1
Scientists found species on the islands that had died out in other countries.
- 2
The inhabitants used to be dependent on the mainland.
- 3
The fact that the first flights to the island were infrequent was because of poor weather conditions.
- 4
Most visitors to the islands stay in the capital city.
- 5
People's lives have been changed more by the airport than any other development.
- 6
At one time, it was only possible to reach Socotra by ______.
- 7
In ______ the airport runway was finished.
- 8
The airport was further expanded with an up-to-date ______.
- 9
Harbour improvements have made it easier to import ______ and building materials.
- 10
Before the new road system, parts of Socotra were only accessible on foot, by ______ or in a four-wheel drive.
- 11
Fewer ______ will be continued by local inhabitants because of the speed of development.
- 12
Biodiversity officers ensured the new road did not pass through places with rare ______.
- 13
In future, environmental damage by road construction will be evaluated in a ______.
Reading Passage 2: Theory of Mind in Children
A considerable amount of research since the mid 1980s has been concerned with what has been termed children's theory of mind. This involves children's ability to understand that people can have different beliefs and representations of the world—a capacity that is shown by four years of age. Furthermore, this ability appears to be absent in children with autism. The ability to work out that another person is thinking is clearly an important aspect of both cognitive and social development. Furthermore, one important explanation for autism is that children suffering from this condition do not have a theory of mind (TOM). Consequently, the development of children's TOM has attracted considerable attention.
Wimmer and Perner devised a 'false belief task' to address this question. They used some toys to act out the following story. Maxi left some chocolate in a blue cupboard before he went out. When he was away his mother moved the chocolate to a green cupboard. Children were asked to predict where Maxi will look for his chocolate when he returns. Most children under four years gave the incorrect answer, that Maxi will look in the green cupboard. Those over four years tended to give the correct answer, that Maxi will look in the blue cupboard. The incorrect answers indicated that the younger children did not understand that Maxi's beliefs and representations no longer matched the actual state of the world, and they failed to appreciate that Maxi will act on the basis of his beliefs rather than the way that the world is actually organised.
A simpler version of the Maxi task was devised by Baron-Cohen to take account of criticisms that younger children may have been affected by the complexity and too much information of the story in the task described above. For example, the child is shown two dolls, Sally and Anne, who have a basket and a box, respectively. Sally also has a marble, which she places in her basket, and then leaves to take a walk. While she is out of the room, Anne takes the marble from the basket, eventually putting it in the box. Sally returns, and child is then asked where Sally will look for the marble. The child passes the task if she answers that Sally will look in the basket, where she put the marble; the child fails the task if she answers that Sally will look in the box, where the child knows the marble is hidden, even though Sally cannot know, since she did not see it hidden there. In order to pass the task, the child must be able to understand that another's mental representation of the situation is different from their own, and the child must be able to predict behavior based on that understanding. The results of research using false-belief tasks have been fairly consistent: most normally-developing children are unable to pass the tasks until around age four.
Leslie argues that, before 18 months, children treat the world in a literal way and rarely demonstrate pretence. He also argues that it is necessary for the cognitive system to distinguish between what is pretend and what is real. If children were not able to do this, they would not be able to distinguish between imagination and reality. Leslie suggested that this pretend play becomes possible because of the presence of a de-coupler that copies primary representations to secondary representations. For example, children, when pretending a banana is a telephone, would make a secondary representation of a banana. They would manipulate this representation and they would use their stored knowledge of 'telephone' to build on this pretence.
There is also evidence that social processes play a part in the development of TOM. Meins and her colleagues have found that what they term mindmindedness in maternal speech to six-month old infants is related to both security of attachment and to TOM abilities. Mindmindedness involves speech that discusses infants' feelings and explains their behaviour in terms of mental stages (e.g. 'you're feeling hungry').
Lewis investigated older children living in extended families in Crete and Cyprus. They found that children who socially interact with more adults, who have more friends, and who have more older siblings tend to pass TOM tasks at a slightly earlier age than other children. Furthermore, because young children are more likely to talk about their thoughts and feelings with peers than with their mothers, peer interaction may provide a special impetus to the development of a TOM. A similar point has been made by Dunn, who argues that peer interaction is more likely to contain pretend play and that it is likely to be more challenging because other children, unlike adults, do not make large adaptations to the communicative needs of other children.
In addition, there has been concern that some aspects of the TOM approach underestimate children's understanding of other people. After all, infants will point to objects apparently in an effort to change a person's direction of gaze and interest; they can interact quite effectively with other people; they will express their ideas in opposition to the wishes of others; and they will show empathy for the feeling of others. Schatz studied the spontaneous speech of three-year-olds and found that these children used mental terms, and used them in circumstances where there was a contrast between, for example, not being sure where an object was located and finding it, or between pretending and reality. Thus the social abilities of children indicate that they are aware of the difference between mental states and external reality at ages younger than four.
A different explanation has been put forward by Harris. He proposed that children use 'simulation'. This involves putting yourself in the other person's position, and then trying to predict what the other person would do. Thus success on false belief tasks can be explained by children trying to imagine what they would do if they were a character in the stories, rather than children being able to appreciate the beliefs of other people. Such thinking about situations that do not exist involves what is termed counterfactual reasoning.
- 14
Found that children under 4 can tell difference between reality and mentality.
- A. Baron-Cohen
- B. Meins
- C. Wimmer and Perner
- D. Lewis
- E. Dunn
- F. Schatz
- G. Harris
- H. Leslie
- 15
Conducted a famous experiment and drew a conclusion that children under 4 were unable to comprehend the real state of the world.
- 16
Found that children who get along with sisters and brothers often passed the test more easily.
- 17
Revised an easier experiment to rule out the possibility that children might be influenced by sophisticated reasoning.
- 18
A terminology related to a social factor such as emotion.
- 19
Peer play is more important than parent's interaction in young children.
- 20
Children may be more willing to act as a role in stories rather than understand other's belief.
- 21
In the 1980s a theory called ______ was designed to research if children have the ability to represent reality.
- 22
The first experiment involved a boy, with questions about where he can find the location of ______.
- 23
It was accused that this experiment had excessive ______.
- 24
Another modified experiment involving two dolls found most children passed the test at the age of ______.
- 25
Lewis and Dunn researched ______ children in a certain place.
- 26
Children who play with ______ have more mates and companions.
- 27
Peer interaction is ______ because it consists of pretending elements.
Reading Passage 3: Look Who Was Talking
When did we start talking to each other and how long did it take us to become so good at it? One view of language development, held by linguists such as Noam Chomsky and anthropologists such as Richard Klein, is that language, specifically the spoken word, appeared suddenly among modern humans a mere 35,000 to 50,000 years ago and that the ability to speak words and use syntax was recently genetically hard-wired into our brains in a kind of language organ. This view of language is associated with the old idea that logical thought is dependent on words, a concept originating with Plato and much in vogue in the 19th century – that is, animals do not speak because they do not think. However, the abstract thought demonstrated in 20th-century experiments with chimpanzees and bonobos put this theory in doubt.
An alternative to the Chomskian theory is that language developed as a series of inventions. This was first suggested by the 18th-century philosopher Etienne Bonnot de Condillac. He argued that spoken language had developed out of gesture language (langage d’action) and that both were inventions arising initially from the simple association between action and object. The theory sees gesture language as arising originally among apes as sounds accompanying gestures, with these sounds gradually becoming coded into ‘words’ as the new skill drove its own evolution. Subsequently, coded words developed into deliberate, complex communication. Evolutionary pressures promoted the development of an anatomy geared to speech – the larynx, vocal muscles and a specific part of the brain immediately next to the part responsible for gestures.
The view that spoken language was ultimately a cultural invention like tool-making, which then drove the biological evolution of the brain and vocal apparatus, seems obvious when you think of the development of different languages. The unique features of a language such as French clearly do not result from any physiological aspect of being French but are the cultural possessions of the French-speaking community. Each language evolves from one generation to the next, constantly adapting itself to cope with the learning biases of each new set of young, immature minds.
Those anthropologists and fossil experts who accept that speech started early still tend to think of language evolution as a gradual 2-million-year process, with our own modern human species (Homo sapiens) way out at the top. A major reason for this is the perception that brain growth among humans was gradual over a similar period. Several recent changes in the fossil evidence, though, bring this into doubt.
The first of these is a re-dating of soil layers from the famous Olduvai Gorge in East Africa, where many key fossil remains have been found. A number of big-brained human species appear to be much older than previously thought, with several specimens dating from over a million years ago. When brain sizes for all available skulls are plotted against time using the revised dates, the result is startling: the bulk of increases in brain size was over by around 1.2 million years ago, with some African human species having brain volumes easily within the modern human range by that time.
So, we have the paradox that over the period when our brain was growing most rapidly, our material cultural development, as measured by stone tools, advanced only marginally; then, over a million years later, when the development of anatomically modern humans finally started to accelerate, artistically and technologically, our brains were actually getting smaller.
The additional piece of evidence that makes this paradox all the more significant is that brain size did not just leap between human species in a direct line of ascent towards ourselves. Over the period from 2.5 to 1.5 million years ago, brains were growing more rapidly than at any time since, within all the different human species. The logical conclusion is that there must have been a unique new behaviour driving brain growth, shared between all species of humans.
So, what was driving rapid brain growth right at the beginning, 2.5 million years ago? The answer may have been staring us in the face. Namely, that not only early humans but their ancestors had started the trend in the very useful skill of verbal communication. Around 2.5 million years ago, the weather took a decided turn for the worse, becoming more variable and colder and drier. The search for food became more taxing, and there would have been a real need to communicate more effectively and cope with the worsening environment in a co-operative way. The near maximum in brain size achieved by 1.2 million years ago indicates that those early ancestors could already have been talking perfectly well. Our brain, which had developed to manipulate and organise complex symbolic aspects of speech internally, could now be turned to a variety of other tasks.
So what happened in the million-year gap after that? Why did we take so long to get to the moon? Cultural evolution aided by communication and teaching is a cumulative interactive process. If each new generation invented just one new skill or idea and passed it on with the rest to their children and cousins, you could predict exactly the same curve of cultural advance as we see from the archaeological and historical record – first very slow, then faster and faster.
- 28
The development of human speech can be traced back to apes.
- A. Chomsky
- B. Condillac
- C. neither Chomsky nor Condillac
- 29
Animal research is essential for understanding the development of human speech.
- 30
Language emerged relatively late in human evolution.
- 31
Non-verbal language was essential in the development of verbal language.
- 32
The development of different languages is related more to environmental than biological factors.
- 33
The ability to think rationally is linked to the ability to speak.
- 34
Anthropologists now agree on the point in time when speech began.
- 35
The rate of human technological development in ancient times was directly related to brain size.
- 36
The period when the brain was growing most quickly has now been identified.
- 37
The development of agriculture influenced language development.
- 38
Cultural development has been seen to follow a particular pattern throughout human history.
- 39
Revised fossil evidence indicates most brain growth was complete.
- A. 2.5 million years ago
- B. 1.5 million years ago
- C. 1.2 million years ago
- D. 0.5 million years ago
- 40
The writer suggests that language development was complete.
- 41
An external change may have influenced language development.
答题卡
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答案
1. TRUE
2. FALSE
3. NOT GIVEN
4. NOT GIVEN
5. FALSE
6. boat
7. 1999
8. terminal
9. food
10. donkey
11. traditions
12. plants
13. report
14. F
15. C
16. D
17. A
18. B
19. D
20. G
21. Theory of mind / TOM / Children's TOM
22. chocolate
23. information
24. four / 4
25. older
26. adults
27. challenging
28. B
29. C
30. A
31. B
32. C
33. A
34. NO
35. NO
36. YES
37. NOT GIVEN
38. YES
39. C
40. C
41. A