2016年1月9日
词汇题：
durable=long last
simultaneously=at the same time
recognized=accepted
case in point=good example
the course of change=the way change developed
courteous=polite
barring=excluding
elevated=high
incidence=frequency
dismiss=reject
hasten=hurry
1月9日托福阅读第一篇 英国工业革命之后的大萧条
原文回顾：其他地方享受着工业革命带来成果时，英国人民却在水深火热之中。造成这种萧条的原因来自工业革命本身，联通的便利使得其它国家的农作物涌进欧洲，英国不得不降低粮食价格来提高竞争力，降价就得提高产量，于是农作物生产过剩，无人消费。
第二篇 语言学
原文回顾：相似的语言来自同一种语言体系，语言在某一个时候被分化成很多支，时间越长，变化越大。不一样的地区有不一样的语言，然而一些相似的语言可能来自同一种语言体系。经过漫长的演变，各种语族的语法结构都不同。不过这不影响研究，因为真正能反应人们想法和经历的是词汇。比如词汇里二十多种有关衣服的表达，那么这说明这对他们有特殊意义，而且他们的母语都有这东西。
相关背景学习： Linguistics
第三篇 白垩纪的物种大灭绝
原文回顾： 恐龙在白垩纪灭绝是被广泛承认的，不过很多物种也是在这个时候灭绝的。恐龙灭绝还有一个原因是他繁殖太慢，有的动物比如鳄鱼就存活了下来。活下来的浮游生物大多有一种能力，不过界线两边的浮游生物化石有变化，浮游生物突然减少，而在这里另一种生物的石化增多了，而且正好在同一沉积层。他们之间可能有某些联系。
相关背景学习：Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence.
The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old. The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5 billion years ago, during the Eoarchean Era after a geological crust started to solidify following the earlier molten Hadean Eon. There are microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Earlier physical evidences of life include graphite, a biogenic substance, in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in southwestern Greenland, as well as, "remains of biotic life" found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth ... then it could be common in the universe."
More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.
Through evolution, species arise through the process of speciation—where new varieties of organisms arise and thrive when they are able to find and exploit an ecological niche—and species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. The relationship between animals and their ecological niches has been firmly established. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance, although some species, called living fossils, survive with virtually no morphological change for hundreds of millions of years.
Mass extinctions are relatively rare events; however, isolated extinctions are quite common. Only recently have extinctions been recorded and scientists have become alarmed at the current high rate of extinctions. Most species that become extinct are never scientifically documented. Some scientists estimate that up to half of presently existing plant and animal species may become extinct by 2100.