总评：
本次阅读考试一旧两新，旅游业、农业和发展史类的文章都偏难，题型也不简单，出现了两道段落信息配对，并且占到了10题的份额，所以大家在时间上都较为紧张。同时出现了有选项和无选项的summary，整场考试无论从文章还是题型来说都较难。大家在扩大平时阅读量的同时，定要注意做题时的串题技巧，特别是段落信息体和heading题等主旨题出现的文章都巧妙运用串题，使得做前面的题目对做后面的题目有绝对的帮助!
真题回忆：
Passage1：农业旅游
1、主要内容：
以两类农业旅行作为例子，一个关于cheese，一个关于picnic，引出农业旅游的发展，后半篇讲述怎样促进农民开发新项目，如何把钱很好地投入到旅游建设当中。
2、题型：段落信息配对、配对题、选项式summary
3、剑桥真题文章推荐：剑五Test4Passage1 The impact of wilderness tourism
4、推荐阅读文章：
Industrial Agriculture Must Give Way to Sustainable Farming
By Al Krebs THAYNE COZART
The proclaimed economic and societal benefits of a worldwide industrial agriculture system wouldn't measure up very well when compared to a sustainable agriculture system if an evaluation of the industrial system honestly measured all of its "external costs" against its claimed benefits. That was the primary point driven home by Jules Pretty, professor and director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex in England, during a seminar to students and faculty who packed a classroom at Iowa State University October 20. The topic of Pretty's seminar was "Rethinking Agri-Culture as if the Real World Matters." The seminar was sponsored by the Energy Initiative of ISU's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and the ISU bioethics program. Pretty, who also is editor of the Journal of Sustainability, contended that "those who support industrialized agriculture measure its success in narrow economic terms of food price and availability and tend to ignore its costly unintended consequences to society and the environment." He added, "They are not being seriously challenged to give a full accounting. We are trying at the Centre to change that by scientifically measuring or estimating in Britain what we call the 'externalities' of industrialized agriculture and also the full benefits of a sustainable ag system." In the British study, some of those industrial ag externalities evaluated were: water pollution from farm waste, soil nutrients, erosion, and pesticides; loss of landscape and biodiversity; food-borne diseases; air pollution from gaseous emissions; unnecessary transportation costs of food; human dislocation from rural to urban; rural com m unity decline; poor hum an diets and obesity, and cost of direct government subsidies. In his study, the annual costs of these externalities during the 1990s totaled 1.54 billion pounds (approximately U.S. $2.6 billion). "Britain had to spend this to deal with the effects of industrial ag, so this cost is a hidden subsidy from the public to polluters," Pretty emphasized. Some of the sustainable ag benefit he tried to evaluate were: lands cape aesthetics, biodiversity, clean water, flood protection, carbon sequestration,ruraleconomy,andcommunitycohesion. Thelargestvalueascribedtoa positive benefits from sustainable ag practices was 14 billion pounds (U.S. $23.7 billion) for rural landscape services (tourism). In Britain, the annual value for rural tourism outstripped the total value of all the food produced nearly 10-fold. Harderito measure, but valuable none-the-less, according to Pretty, were wetland benefits for flood protection, waste treatment, and wildlife habitats; energy savings on transportation, and carbon sequestration to reduce global warming. "In determining future world agriculture policies, the keys," said Pretty, "are finding ways to encourage polluters to reduce or pay for the costs of the negative aspects of their system, while also finding ways to reward farmers for the positive aspects of a sustainable system. I think a carrot may work better than a stick in many cases."
Pretty sees hope for a gradually shifting world food-production systems from industrialized to sustainable and multifunctional." It's a myth that the world can't produce enough food from sustainable, local food systems for its population --- just like it's a myth that hunger and starvation are based on world food shortages, when the truth is hunger is based on poverty and the inequities and economies of food distribution," he said. He bases his hope on his group's study of 208 sustainable ag projects in 52 nations around the globe. He said nearly nine million farmers---most in Africa, Asia and Latin America --- have adopted sustainable ag practices and technologies on nearly 30 million hectares (70 mllion acres), an increase of 56% in three years. He claimed that in most of these projects, both the quantity and quality of food increased, as well as local economies.
To keep increasing sustainable food systems around the world, Pretty listed five key principles: Substitute management skills and knowledge for costly inputs; build on-farm biodiversity and soil health; organize into like-minded groups; add value to commodities, and sell directly to consumers.
"We also need to re-establish our connections to the land and between producers and consumers," he summarized. "We need to rebuild a land and food ethic. And, remember, our choices as consumers make difference s to people, nature and communities. The most political ecision you make as a consumer is now how you vote, but how and where you buy food."
He concluded by stating that so-called "cheap food" is very expensive Because it's paid for in many ways:(1) at the market;(2) through taxes for subsidies; (3) through environmental clean up costs;(4) through treating diet-based human health concerns, and (5) through economically diminished rural communities
Passage2：Photography摄影发展史(2006年8月26日真题)
1、主要内容：
文章主要讨论摄影的发展，以及对艺术，尤其是painting的冲击。有人认为摄影仅仅是一种图像的纪实，而有人认为是艺术。摄影技术刚开始的时候被质疑，但是后来经过一系列验证变得被广大民众所接受。艺术家也随之开始使用这项技术，painting和摄影两项技术相互促进和发展。
2、题型：段落信息配对、摘要填空、判断题
3、文章还原：
第一段：介绍摄影历史;
第二段：某艺术家认为摄影知识某纪实手段，完全谈不上是艺术;
第三段：某人支持这种观点。肖像画后来多半被照片替代，但是肖像画没有完全消亡，因为有些有钱人也画肖像画。摄影给更多人带来记录自己面容的机会。
第四段：面对照相是否是艺术的争论，出现两种态度。一类人像画油画那样追求某种艺术效果，或者对照片进行再创作;
第五段：另一些人则觉得照片是一种纪实的艺术;
第七段：和油画相比，照片的特点在于能捕捉瞬间的表情。所以后来印象主义和现实主义的画家都受到了艺术的影响。
4、推荐雅思阅读文章：剑六Test3Passage1电影发展史
Passage3：The impact of rising salinity
1、主要内容：
文章提到了Underground Water 中盐度含量随着环境的变化而不断上升。世界上很多地方已经开始经历盐度含量超标的困境。文章详细介绍了盐度含量超标对澳大利亚的农业发展的影响。
2、题型：配对题、填空题、选择题
3、剑桥雅思文章推荐：剑七Test1Passage2 Making every drop count
4、阅读文章推荐：
Could Seawater Solve the Freshwater Crisis?
Experts weigh in on what's holding desalination back
By Ker Than for National Geographic News
With 1.8 billion people predicted to live in areas of extreme water scarcity by 2025, desalination—the removal of salt from water—is increasingly being proposed as a solution.
But before desalination can make a real difference solving in the looming water crisis, officials and experts need to commit to overcoming obstacles that make the process expensive and inefficient, a new paper argues.
Scientists predict that by 2016, the amount of fresh water produced by desalination plants will exceed 10 billion gallons (38 million cubic meters) a year, or double the rate in 2008.
Modern desalination plants use a technology called reverse osmosis, pressing salty water through ultrathin, semipermeable plastic membranes. Unable to pass through, large molecules or ions, such as salt, are filtered out, so fresh water flows out the other side.
This method wastes much less energy than earlier desalination techniques, such as heating seawater and harvesting fresh water from the steam. But a typical reverse osmosis plant can still spend up to 40 percent of its operating costs on generating electricity to run the system—a big reason engineers are searching for ways to cut costs and make plants more efficient, starting at the membrane level.
Situation Normal: All Fouled Up?
Reverse osmosis membranes have improved since their invention in the 1960s. Today's membranes do a better job of allowing water to pass through and keeping salts out, for instance.
The membranes are also more resistant to bacterial contamination, but that doesn't mean the problem of "membrane fouling" has been completely solved.
"When you operate a membrane, bacteria in the water will accumulate on the thin selective layer, making it more difficult to squeeze water through," explained Menachem Elimelech, an environmental engineer at Yale University, who co-authored the new paper.
Chlorine can be used to clear away the bacteria, but today's reverse osmosis membranes are still very sensitive to chlorine and degrade quickly when exposed to the harsh chemical.
"There should be a lot of focus to develop membranes that are chlorine resistant," Elimelech said.
Prefab Desalination Plants?
No matter how good the membranes become, however, reverse osmosis plants will need to become cheaper to build and operate if they're to meet the demands of an increasingly thirsty world, particularly in developing regions.
One way to do this is to standardize plant components and methods and to create smaller, more efficient plants, said Yoram Cohen, a chemical and biomolecular engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
"Why are [personal computers] so cheap?" asked Cohen, who was not involved in the new review. "It's because the technology is standardized. You can buy parts from anyone and exchange them or combine them into your own design."
U.S. Falling Behind?
Another way to reduce costs and improve plants is to invest more in research, development, and education, Cohen said.
In the United States, at least, such funding is inadequate, said Cohen. He worries the U.S. could soon be outpaced in desalination research by countries such as Singapore, Israel, Australia, Spain, and the Netherlands.
Desalination, he added, should be added as a basic element of an undergraduate engineering education.
If such steps aren't taken, he warned, the U.S. will become dependent on other countries for a technology invented on its home soil.
"The first membranes for water desalination were developed here at UCLA by Sidney Loeb and Srivasa Sourirajan in the 1960s," and the pair later built the world's first operating reverse osmosis plant in 1971, Cohen said.
Salt in the Earth
Another puzzle is what to do with the salty water, or brine, created as part of the desalination process.
If a plant is close to the ocean, the brine can be safely released back into the sea if it's dissolved beforehand.
But getting rid of this concentrated solution is more problematic for inland reverse osmosis (RO) plants. "If you're away from a coastal region, it's not a simple matter," Cohen said.
"There are regulations that, in some regions, may prevent discharge of the RO concentrate back into a surface water body or into the sewer. And in certain areas, injecting that water underground may not be permitted and can be very costly."
Despite RO's promise, Yale's Elimelech is concerned that countries might see RO desalination as a silver bullet for water woes. In many cases, the best options may be slightly less sexy but also less expensive: smarter land planning and plain-old water conservation, for example.
(See "Desalination No 'Silver Bullet' in Mideast.")
“You cannot rely absolutely on desalination," he said, "if you have other alternatives."