2014年11月2，希望对各位考生的备考有所帮助，祝每位烤鸭考试顺利，都能取得好成绩！
20141102阅读机经
机经词汇：
redundancy=duplication
presumably=it is reasonable that
exclusive
simulation
premise=assumption
detect=find
significan=importance
outlaying=far
deter
posterity=further generation
resolve=settle
第一篇： 生物多样性(biodiversity)
版本1: 生物多样性越大，一个生态系统越稳定。要求一个生态系统里同种生物少，但是含有同等营养价值的生物多。还有一个与干旱有关的树的例子，好像是cedar的。还有解释disease在多样性强的生态系统里有不好的传播，是因为同种个体少，如果死绝了有别的生物可以代替它，以达到稳定。
版本2： 主要说生物多样性可以促进生态的稳定，先说了物种多样性的三点好处，然后举了狮子斑马数量变化关系和草地的例子来说明这一论题。
版本3：传统的生物学家认为把一个关键物种或足够多的物种消灭后，就会对生物圈造成严重改变。一个人模拟了生态环境做个试验做个实验，然后说一种食物链中的主要捕食者的水声动物被移除以后，另一种生物就成为了主要的捕猎者捕食。然后还有个事例说一个植物在极端干燥的情况下，忘了。生物多样性越大，越稳定。但另一个人做了类似的实验，却不总是得到这样的结果。
解析：
这篇文章属于生态类文章。从文章段落结构看，十分清晰，主题明确，对背景的描述会比较详尽，不会出现因为背景知识的生疏而严重影响对于文章理解的情况。需要注意的是，必须提前对相关类型的TPO文章的生词熟悉，尽量减少生词恐惧带来的内耗。推荐TPO3的文章.
The Long-Term Stability of Ecosystems。
相关背景：
The Long-Term Stability of Ecosystems
Plant communities assemble themselves flexibly, and their particular structure depends on the specific history of the area. Ecologists use the term “succession”to refer to the changes that happen in plant communities and ecosystems over time. The first community in a succession is called a pioneer community, while the long-lived community at the end of succession is called a climax community. Pioneer and successional plant communities are said to change over periods from 1 to 500 years. These changes—in plant numbers and the mix of species—are cumulative. Climax communities themselves change but over periods of time greater than about 500 years.
An ecologist who studies a pond today may well find it relatively unchanged in a year’s time. Individual fish may be replaced, but the number of fish will tend to be the same from one year to the next. We can say that the properties of an ecosystem are more stable than the individual organisms that compose the ecosystem.
At one time, ecologists believed that species diversity made ecosystems stable. They believed that the greater the diversity the more stable the ecosystem. Support for this idea came from the observation that long-lasting climax communities usually have more complex food webs and more species diversity than pioneer communities. Ecologists concluded that the apparent stability of climax ecosystems depended on their complexity. To take an extreme example, farmlands dominated by a single crop are so unstable that one year of bad weather or the invasion of a single pest can destroy the entire crop. In contrast, a complex climax community, such as a temperate forest, will tolerate considerable damage from weather to pests.
The question of ecosystem stability is complicated, however. The first problem is that ecologists do not all agree what “stability”means. Stability can be defined as simply lack of change. In that case, the climax community would be considered the most stable, since, by definition, it changes the least over time. Alternatively, stability can be defined as the speed with which an ecosystem returns to a particular form following a major disturbance, such as a fire. This kind of stability is also called resilience. In that case, climax communities would be the most fragile and the least stable, since they can require hundreds of years to return to the climax state.
Even the kind of stability defined as simple lack of change is not always associated with maximum diversity. At least in temperate zones, maximum diversity is often found in mid-successional stages, not in the climax community. Once a redwood forest matures, for example, the kinds of species and the number of individuals growing on the forest floor are reduced. In general, diversity, by itself, does not ensure stability. Mathematical models of ecosystems likewise suggest that diversity does not guarantee ecosystem stability—just the opposite, in fact. A more complicated system is, in general, more likely than a simple system to break down. A fifteen-speed racing bicycle is more likely to break down than a child’s tricycle.
Ecologists are especially interested to know what factors contribute to the resilience of communities because climax communities all over the world are being severely damaged or destroyed by human activities. The destruction caused by the volcanic explosion of Mount St. Helens, in the northwestern United States, for example, pales in comparison to the destruction caused by humans. We need to know what aspects of a community are most important to the community’s resistance to destruction, as well as its recovery.
Many ecologists now think that the relative long-term stability of climax communities comes not from diversity but from the “patchiness”of the environment, an environment that varies from place to place supports more kinds of organisms than an environment that is uniform. A local population that goes extinct is quickly replaced by immigrants from an adjacent community. Even if the new population is of a different species, it can approximately fill the niche vacated by the extinct population and keep the food web intact.#p#副标题#e#
第二篇：中美洲的文明
版本1:关于mesoamerican的发现，出现了中美洲的各种文明(特别是maya文明)，提到了金字塔地下的发现，后来强调了旅游景点也有大量可发现的价值。
版本2： 美国原始历史，提到玛雅文明，埃及金字塔，然后继续主题
版本3：考古方面的，一些发现否定了之前的理论，中间有个大段的例子是说一个与人有关的原始居民的各种生活习惯的记载，帮助完善历史。
解析：
历史起源类主题的文章可谓是老少咸宜的文章。这一类文章通常段落结构清晰，主题明确，对背景的描述会比较详尽，不会出现因为背景知识的生疏而严重影响对于文章理解的情况。需要注意的是，必须提前对相关类型的TPO文章的生词熟悉，尽量减少生词恐惧带来的内耗。推荐TPO8的文章The Rise of Teotihucan与TPO26的Sumer and the First Cities of the Ancient Near East。
相关背景：
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and cultural area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before theSpanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries.[1][2] It is one of six areas in the world where ancient civilization arose independently, and the second in the Americas after Norte Chico (Caral-Supe) in present-day northern coastalPeru.
As a cultural area, Mesoamerica is defined by a mosaic of cultural traits developed and shared by its indigenous cultures. Beginning as early as 7000 BC, the domestication of maize, beans, squash and chili, as well as the turkey and dog, caused a transition from paleo-Indian hunter-gatherer tribal grouping to the organization of sedentary agricultural villages. In the subsequent formative period, agriculture and cultural traits such as a complex mythological and religious tradition, a vigesimalnumeric system, and a complex calendric system, a tradition of ball playing, and a distinct architectural style, were diffused through the area. Also in this period, villages began to become socially stratified and develop into chiefdoms with the development of large ceremonial centers, interconnected by a network of trade routes for the exchange of luxury goods, such as obsidian, jade,cacao, cinnabar, Spondylus shells, hematite, and ceramics. While Mesoamerican civilization did know of the wheel and basic metallurgy, neither of these technologies became culturally important.[3]
Among the earliest complex civilizations was the Olmec culture, which inhabited the Gulf coast of Mexico and extended inland and southwards across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Frequent contact and cultural interchange between the early Olmec and other cultures in Chiapas, Guatemala and Oaxaca laid the basis for the Mesoamerican cultural area. This formative period saw the spread of distinct religious and symbolic traditions, as well as artistic and architectural complexes. In the subsequent Preclassic period, complex urban polities began to develop among the Maya, with the rise of centers such as El Mirador, Calakmul and Tikal, and theZapotec at Monte Albán. During this period, the first true Mesoamerican writing systems were developed in the Epi-Olmec and the Zapotec cultures, and the Mesoamerican writing tradition reached its height in the Classic Maya Hieroglyphic script.
Mesoamerica is one of only five regions of the world where writing was independently developed. In Central Mexico, the height of the Classic period saw the ascendancy of the city of Teotihuacan, which formed a military and commercial empire whose political influence stretched south into the Maya area and northward. Upon the collapse of Teotihuacán around AD 600, competition between several important political centers in central Mexico, such as Xochicalco and Cholula, ensued. At this time during the Epi-Classic period, the Nahua peoples began moving south into Mesoamerica from the North, and became politically and culturally dominant in central Mexico, as they displaced speakers of Oto-Manguean languages. During the early post-Classic period, Central Mexico was dominated by the Toltec culture, Oaxaca by the Mixtec, and the lowland Maya area had important centers at Chichén Itzá and Mayapán. Towards the end of the post-Classic period, the Aztecs of Central Mexico built a tributary empire covering most of central Mesoamerica.[4]
The distinct Mesoamerican cultural tradition ended with the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Over the next centuries, Mesoamerican indigenous cultures were gradually subjected to Spanish colonial rule. Aspects of the Mesoamerican cultural heritage still survive among the indigenous peoples who inhabit Mesoamerica, many of whom continue to speak their ancestral languages, and maintain many practices harking back to their Mesoamerican roots.[5]
Paleo-Indian[edit]
The Mesoamerican Paleo-Indian period precedes the advent of agriculture and is characterized by a nomadic hunting and gathering subsistence strategy. Big-game hunting, similar to that seen in contemporaneous North America, was a large component of the subsistence strategy of the Mesoamerican Paleo-Indian. Evidence for this time period in Mesoamerica is sparse and the documented sites scattered c. 10,500 BC. These include Chivacabé, Los Tapiales, and Puerta Parada in the highlands of Guatemala, Orange Walkin Belize, and the El Gigante cave in Honduras.[citation needed] These latter sites had a number of obsidian blades and Clovis-style fluted projectile points. Fishtail points, the most common style in South America, were recovered from Puerta Parada, dated to c. 10,000 BC, as well as other sites including Los Grifos cave in Chiapas (c. 8500 BC) and Iztapan (c. 7700–7300 BC), a mammoth kill site located in the Valley of Mexico near Texcoco.[citation needed]
Archaic[edit]
The Archaic period (8000–2000 BC) is characterized by the rise of incipient agriculture in Mesoamerica. The initial phases of the Archaic involved the cultivation of wild plants, transitioning into informal domestication and culminating with sedentism and agricultural production by the close of the period. Archaic sites include Sipacate inEscuintla, Guatemala, where maize pollen samples date to c. 3500 BC.[13] The well-known Coxcatlan cave site in the Valley of Tehuacán, Puebla, which contains over 10,000teosinte cobs (an antecedent to maize), and Guilá Naquitz in Oaxaca represent some of the earliest examples of agriculture in Mesoamerica. The early development of pottery, often seen as a sign of sedentism, has been documented at a number of sites, including the West Mexican sites of Matanchén in Nayarit and Puerto Marqués inGuerrero. La Blanca, Ocós, and Ujuxte in the Pacific Lowlands of Guatemala yielded pottery dated to c. 2500 BC.[citation needed]
Classic[edit]
Early Classic[edit]
The Classic period is marked by the rise and dominance of several polities. The traditional distinction between the Early and Late Classic are marked by their changing fortune and their ability to maintain regional primacy. Of paramount importance are Teotihuacán in central Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala; the Early Classic’s temporal limits generally correlate to the main periods of these sites. Monte Alban in Oaxaca is another Classic-period polity that expanded and flourished during this period, but the Zapotec capital exerted less interregional influence than the other two sites.
During the Early Classic, Teotihuacan participated in and perhaps dominated a far-reaching macro-regional interaction network. Architectural and artifact styles (talud-tablero, tripod slab-footed ceramic vessels) epitomized at Teotihuacan were mimicked and adopted at many distant settlements. Pachuca obsidian, whose trade and distribution is argued to have been economically controlled by Teotihuacan, is found throughout Mesoamerica.
Tikal came to dominate much of the southern Maya lowlands politically, economically, and militarily during the Early Classic. An exchange network centered at Tikal distributed a variety of goods and commodities throughout southeast Mesoamerica, such as obsidian imported from central Mexico (e.g., Pachuca) and highland Guatemala (e.g., El Chayal, which was predominantly used by the Maya during the Early Classic), and jade from the Motagua valley in Guatemala. Carved inscriptions at the site attest to direct interaction with individuals adorned in Teotihuacan-styled dress c. AD 400.[citation needed] However, Tikal was often in conflict with other polities in the Petén Basin, as well as with others outside of it, including Uaxactun, Caracol, Dos Pilas, Naranjo, and Calakmul. Towards the end of the Early Classic, this conflict lead to Tikal’s military defeat at the hands of Caracol in 562, and a period commonly known as the Tikal Hiatus.
Late Classic[edit]
The Late Classic period (beginning ca. AD 600 until AD 909 [varies]) is characterized as a period of interregional competition and factionalization among the numerous regional polities in the Maya area. This largely resulted from the decrease in Tikal’s socio-political and economic power at the beginning of the period. It was therefore during this time that a number of other sites rose to regional prominence and were able to exert greater interregional influence, including Caracol, Copán, Palenque, and Calakmul (which was allied with Caracol and may have assisted in the defeat of Tikal), and Dos Pilas Aguateca and Cancuén in the Petexbatún region of Guatemala. Around 710, Tikal arose again and started to build strong alliances and defeat its worst enemies. In the Maya area, the Late Classic ended with the so-called "Maya collapse", a transitional period coupling the general depopulation of the southern lowlands and development and florescence of centers in the northern lowlands.
Some Mesoamerican cultures never achieved dominant status or left impressive archeological remains but should be mentioned as noteworthy. These include the Otomi, Mixe–Zoque groups (which may or may not have been related to the Olmecs), the northern Uto-aztecan groups, often referred to as the Chichimeca, that include the Cora andHuichol, the Chontales, the Huaves, and the Pipil, Xincan and Lencan peoples of Central America.#p#副标题#e#
第三篇： 地球生命的起源
版本一： 一开始讲1953年有两个科学家做实验，他们用三个a开头的气体(其中只认识氨气)加到开水里做什么东西最后反正产生蛋白质，含有和氨基酸相似的成分。但后文表示后人不同意这样就可以轻易找出生物进化的秘密，并表示地球上的一些物质(CO2)是彗星带过来的。
版本二：地球上最原始的生命是如何形成的，先开始说一个人的理论，他认为是将三种物质放在一起从而产生氨基酸，由此构成蛋白质组成生命物质，但这一理论后来被否定了，原因是原始大气二氧化碳含量高，后来的人又提出另外一种假设。
版本三：两个人做实验来测定地球大气的形成。他俩把methane和其它物质和开水放在一起，产生了amino acid，这一结果十分惊人。可随后一连串的问题却削弱了这个实验结果的重要性，因为科学家认为这个问题不是最重要的。而且在地球形成初期一种非常重要的H物质很那在carbon的环境下产生。
解析：本文围绕地球生命是如何形成这个主题展开论证。做题时需注意记录笔记，对于结构化阅读及最后一题的解答有很大好处。地理地质类主题是托福阅读常见考点，结构不难理解。需注意各例证和主题的支撑关系。由于条理清晰，最后一题尽量考虑从正面选出，排除为辅。
相关背景：
Earth's atmosphere is a mixture of gases, primarily nitrogen (78 Percent) and oxygen (21 Percent). The remaining one percent of the atmosphere is made up of water vapor, argon, carbon dioxide, methane, other gases and aerosols. Aerosols include small particles, such as dust, volcanic ash, sea salt, dirt, ice crystals and smoke. Because of the amount of aerosols varies throughout the earth's surface, the composition of the earth's atmosphere varies.
Initial atmospheric makeup is generally related to the chemistry and temperature of the local solar nebula during planetary formation and the subsequent escape of interior gases. The original atmospheres started with the radially local rotating gases that collapsed to the spaced rings that formed the planets. They were then modified over time by various complex factors, resulting in quite different outcomes.
The atmospheres of the planets Venus and Mars are primarily composed of carbon dioxide, with small quantities of nitrogen,argon, oxygen and traces of other gases.
The atmospheric composition on Earth is largely governed by the by-products of the very life that it sustains. Dry air fromEarth's atmosphere contains 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, and traces of hydrogen, helium, and other "noble" gases (by volume), but generally a variable amount of water vapour is also present, on average about 1%.
The low temperatures and higher gravity of the gas giants—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—allows them more readily to retain gases with low molecular masses. These planets have hydrogen–helium atmospheres, with trace amounts of more complex compounds.
Two satellites of the outer planets possess non-negligible atmospheres: Titan, a moon of Saturn, and Triton, a moon of Neptune, which are mainly nitrogen. Pluto, in the nearer part of its orbit, has an atmosphere of nitrogen and methane similar to Triton's, but these gases are frozen when farther from the Sun.
Other bodies within the Solar System have extremely thin atmospheres not in equilibrium. These include the Moon (sodium gas), Mercury (sodium gas), Europa (oxygen), Io(sulfur), and Enceladus (water vapor).
The atmospheric composition of an extra-solar planet was first determined using the Hubble Space Telescope. Planet HD 209458b is a gas giant with a close orbit around a star in the constellation Pegasus. Its atmosphere is heated to temperatures over 1,000 K, and is steadily escaping into space. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and sulfur have been detected in the planet's inflated atmosphere.
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